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PRICE  10  CENTS 


Socialism,  Revolution 
and  Internationalism 

By  GABRIEL  DEVILLE 


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SOCIALISM,  REVOLUTION 

AND 

INTERNATIONALISM 
*** 

A  LECTURE 

DELIVERED  IN  PARIS,  NOVEMBER  27,  1893,  BY 

GABRIEL  DEVILLE 


Translated  by 

ROBERT  RIVES  LA  MONTE 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 
1907 


PRESS   OF 

JOHN  F.  HIGGINS 
CHICAGO 


SOCIALISM,  REVOLUTION  AND 
INTERNATIONALISM. 


Socialism,  revolution,  internationalism — these  are  the 
three  subjects  regarding  which  I  beg  your  permission  to 
say  what — with  no  pretence  of  being  infallible — I  believe 
to  be  the  truth.  At  the  risk  of  telling  you  nothing  new, 
I  will  simply  try  to  speak  truth.  Those  who  reproach  the 
socialists  for  constantly  repeating  the  same  thing,  have, 
no  doubt,  the  habit  of  accommodating  the  truth  to  suit 
their  taste  for  variety.  On  the  other  hand,  to  talk  of 
socialism  is  to  do  what  everyone  else  is  doing  at  this  time, 
but  I  will  speak  to  you  of  it  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
socialist,  and — unhappily — that  is  not  as  yet  equally  com- 
mon. 

The  signal  and  distinctive  mark  of  modern  socialism 
is  that  it  springs  directly  from  the  facts.  Far  from  rest- 
ing on  the  imaginary  conceptions  of  the  intellect,  from 
being  a  more  or  less  Utopian  vision  of  an  ideal  society, 
socialism  is  to-day  simply  the  theoretical  expression  of 

M214343 


the  contemporaneous  phase  of  the  economic  evolution 
of  humanity. 

At  this  point  we  are  met  with  two  objections. 

On  the  one  hand,  because  we  say  that  socialism  springs 
from  the  facts,  we  are  accused  of  denying  the  influence 
of  the  Idea  and  the  liberal  defenders  of  the  Idea  rise  up 
in  revolt;  they  can  calm  themselves  again.  How  could 
we  deny  the  influence  of  the  Idea,  when  socialism  itself  is 
as  yet,  as  I  have  just  pointed  out,  only  a  theoretical  ex- 
pression, i.  £.,  an  idea,  which  we  nevertheless  believe  has 
a  certain  influence? 

We  merely  assert  that  a  truth,  irrevocably  established 
by  science  as  a  valid  generalization,  does  not  cease  to  be 
a  truth  when  it  is  applied  to  human  history  and  socialism. 
This  truth  is  the  action  of  the  environment:  all  living 
beings  are  the  product  of  the  environment  in  which  they 
live.  To  the  environment,  in  the  last  analysis,  to  the 
relations  necessarily  created  by  the  multiple  contacts, 
actions  and  reactions  of  the  environment  and  the  en- 
vironed are  due  all  the  transformations  of  all  organisms 
and,  in  consequence,  all  the  phenomena  that  emanate 
from  them.  Thought  is  one  of  these  phenomena,  and, 
just  like  all  the  others,  it  has  its  source  in  actual  facts. 
To  say  that  socialism  springs  from  the  facts,  is  then  simply 
to  place  the  socialist  idea  on  the  same  plane  with  all 
other  ideas.  In  socialism,  as  in  all  subjects,  the  idea  is 
the  reflex  in  the  brain  of  the  relations  of  man  with  his 
surroundings,  and  the  greater  or  less  aptitude  of  the 
brain  for  acquiring,  retaining  and  combining  ideas,  con- 
stitutes intelligence.  The  latter,  in  making  various  com- 
binations out  of  the  elements  provided  by  the  environ- 


merit,  may  obviously  lose  sight  of  the  reality  which  serves 
as  its  foundation,  but  our  socialism  aims  never  to  depart 
from  the  data  drawn  from  unbiased  observation  of  the 
facts. 

We  are  accused,  on  the  other  hand,  because  we  believe 
that  the  economic  question  contains  the  whole  of  social- 
ism, of  denying  the  existence  and  influence  of  the  intel- 
lectual factor,  the  sentimental  factor,  the  psychological 
factor — in  short,  a  whole  collection  of  factors.  Now,  as 
I  am  going  to  try  to  show  you,  our  only  error,  if  it  is 
an  error,  is  that  we  wish  to  put  the  cart  behind  the  horse, 
and  to  accuse  us  of  wishing  to  suppress  the  cart  because 
we  refuse  to  put  it  in  front  or  alongside  of  the  horse, 
proves,  at  once,  the  incontestable  desire  to  find  us  at 
fault,  and  the  difficulty  of  gratifying  that  desire. 

Man,  as  I  said  just  now,  is  the  product  of  the  environ- 
ment. But,  to  the  influence  of  the  cosmic  or  natural 
environment,  which  affects  all  beings,  there  was  soon 
joined  in  his  case  the  influence  of  the  special  environment 
created  by  him,  an  environment  resulting  from  the 
acquired  means  of  action,  from  the  material  of  the  tools 
used,  from  the  conditions  of  life  added  by  him  to  those 
furnished  him  by  nature,  or  else  substituted  for  them, 
the  influence,  in  a  word,  of  the  economic  environment, 
an  influence  which  has  gradually  become  predominant 
because  the  conditions  of  life,  determining  in  all  orders  of 
society  man's  mode  of  life,  have  finally  become  less  and 
less  dependent  upon  the  purely  physical  capabilities  of 
the  cosmic  environment,  and  more  and  more  dependent 
upon  the  means  of  action  acquired  by  human  exertions, 


upon  the  artificial  capabilities  of  the  economic  environ- 
ment, upon  human  thought  materialized  in  various  inno- 
vations. 

We  find  at  the  foundation  of  everything  affecting  man 
the  influence  of  the  natural  and  economic  environments, 
and,  if  it  is  quite  true  that  we  recognize  the  preponderant 
influence  of  the  economic  environment,  it  is  passing 
strange  to  accuse  us  of  not  recognizing  the  action  of 
human  intelligence,  which  we  assert  is  the  creator  of  this 
environment.  Only  we  do  not  forget  that,  at  any  stage 
of  development  whatever,  intelligence  does  nothing  by 
its  creations  except  to  elaborate  the  elements  which  it 
finds  "ready  made/'  as  it  were,  in  the  environment. 

Therefore,  intelligence  can,  by  working  with  the  ele- 
ments furnished  by  the  existing  environment,  produce  a 
change  in  this  environment.  This  new  environment  thus 
changed  becomes  the  determining  environment  of  future 
intelligence.  You  see  that,  far  from  degrading  the  role 
of  -intelligence,  we  attribute  to  it  a  considerable  impor- 
tance; we  only  refuse  to  see  in  it  a  spontaneous  phenome- 
non. 

Having  replied  to  the  reproach  of  not  taking  into  con- 
sideration what  is  called  intelligence  and  is  paraded  as 
the  intellectual  factor,  it  is  scarcely  necessary  for  me  to 
honor  with  special  replies  all  the  other  factors  mobilized 
against  us,  as  they  are  all  merely  products  of  intelligence. 
I  will  remark,  however,  that  if  it  is  true  that  we  do  not 
deduce  our  theory  from  this  association  of  factors,  this 
does  not  authorize  the  conclusion  that  morality,  right, 
justice,  psychology,  and  sentiment  are  for  us  words  devoid 
of  meaning.  To  refuse  to  elevate  them  to  the  rank  of 


scientific  proofs,  which  is  what  we  do,  and  all  that  we  do,  is 
not  to  deny  them;  it  is  simply  to  avoid  employing  them 
for  a  use  for  which  they  are  not  and  could  not  be  destined. 
Because,  to  uphold  our  theory,  we  prefer  to  have  recourse 
to  the  observation  of  facts  and  their  tendencies,  we  have 
never  proscribed  the  conception  or  sentiment  of  justice 
as  motives  for  adhesion  to  that  very  theory,  and  we  do 
not  hesitate  to  declare  that  that  which  is  unfitted  to  serve 
as  a  scientific  proof,  may  be  utilized  as  a  motive  for  action. 

Moreover,  even  those  who  attribute  to  the  "syndicate" 
of  factors  a  preponderating  power  over  historical  progress 
do  not  attribute  to  intelligence  a  greater  influence  than 
we  recognize  as  belonging  to  it.  In  fact,  the  controversy 
here  is  not  concerning  the  influence  of  ideas.  The  con- 
troversy arises  when  we  attempt  to  determine  which  ideas 
are  influential.  On  either  side  it  is  simply  a  matter 
of  choosing  from  among  the  products  of  intelligence.  Our 
opponents  insist  upon  the  claims  of  the  factors  in  com- 
bination, instead  of  recognizing,  as  do  we,  the  predomin- 
ant influence  of  the  ideas  which  clothe  themselves  in  the 
phenomenal  form  of  acts,  such  as  inventions,  etc.,  which 
lead  to  the  modification  of  the  economic  environment 
and  consequently,  as  we  believe,  to  the  modification  of 
man  himself,  in  his  mode  of  life  first,  in  his  habits  and 
methods  of  thought  afterward. 

As  soon  as  it  is  seen  that  the  transformation  of  the 
economic  conditions,  of  the  conditions  of  life,  is  the  fun- 
damental transformation,  that  upon  which  all  the  others 
are  more  or  less  dependent,  it  will  be  recognized  that  to 
say  that  socialism  is  simply  the  expression  of  the  con- 
temporaneous phase  of  economic  conditions  is  not  to 


narrow,  in  the  slightest  degree,  its  field  of  action,  but 
only  to  define  more  accurately  its  immediate  goal.  The 
affirmation  that  there  is  in  progress  an  evolution  of  the 
economic  environment  implies  necessarily  a  correspond- 
ing evolution  of  the  various  branches  of  human  knowledge, 
which  are  all  influenced  by  this  environment,  just  as  the 
apple-tree  implies  the  apple  without  its  being  necessary  to 
speak  of  the  integral  apple-tree.1  If  socialism  is  con- 
tained "in  a  purely  economic  formula,"  it  is  just  as  the 
apple-tree  is  contained  in  the  seed.  Let  us  be  vigilant  to 
see  that  this  "economic  formula"  and  this  seed  are  not 
thwarted  in  their  normal  development,  and  we  shall  have 
all  the  fruits  that  may  be  desired,  even  if  we  refrain  from 
heaping  qualifying  or  complemental  adjectives  upon  the 
apple-tree  and  socialism. 

Some  have  thought  that  they  have  discovered  an  argu- 
ment against  this  predominance  of  the  economic  environ- 
ment and  of  the  economic  question,  in  the  fact  that  some 
events  which  are  not  economic  in  nature — and  they  cite, 
most  frequently,  the  invention  of  gunpowder  and  the 

1  A  word  is  needed  to  make  the  force  of  this  sarcasm  clear 
to  American  readers.  There  was  formed  around  the  late 
Benott  Malon,  the  founder  of  La  Revue  Socialiste,  a  small 
but  very  intelligent  and  influential  school  of  socialists  who 
loved  (and  still  love)  to  prate  about  the  inadequacy  of 
Marxism,  its  neglect  of  various  "factors,"  etc.,  etc.  They 
regard  Marxian  economics  as  being  true  so  far  as  they 
go,  but  as  constituting  a  very  inadequate  and  incomplete 
socialism,  which  it  was  reserved  for  them,  by  a  beneficent 
Providence,  to  complete.  Their  own  socialism  they  call 
"integral  socialism."  We  have  their  like  in  America— men 
who  use  Marxian  ammunition  and  belittle  Marx. — Tr. 


revocation  of  the  edict  of  Nantes — have  had  a  great  in- 
fluence on  human  history.  They  forget  that,  if  such  or 
such  an  important  event  was  not  directly  in  itself  an 
economic  phenomenon,  is  is  chiefly  by  the  consequences 
that  it  had  from  the  economic  point  of  view  that  it  be- 
came important;  like  all  human  discoveries,  all  historic 
events,  it  reached  a  point  where  it  became  a  modifying 
element  of  the  economic  environment. 

To  recapitulate,  if  we  insist  upon  the  influence  of  the 
surroundings,  and,  particularly,  upon  the  preponderant 
influence  of  the  economic  environment — the  creation  of 
man — this  does  not  justify  representing  us  as  attributing 
an  exclusive  influence  to  the  economic  environment  and  as 
holding  that  this  environment  itself  is  created  and  in- 
fluenced only  by  facts  properly  classed  as  economic. 

I  return  then  to  my  first  proposition:  socialism  must 
have  and  has  for  its  foundation  the  economic  environ- 
ment, the  economic  facts.  What  are  those  facts? 


__    10    — 


II. 

In  order  for  man,  who  can  live  only  on  condition  that 
he  works,  to  be  able  to  perform  any  sort  of  work,  he 
must  have  at  his  disposition  the  instruments  and  the 
subject  of  labor.  Now,  these  tools  and  this  material,  in 
one  word,  the  means  of  labor,  are,  more  and  more,  be- 
coming the  property  of  the  capitalists.  Those  who  are 
despoiled  of  the  means  of  utilizing  in  work  their  own 
labor-power  (or  physical  capacity  for  work)  are,  hence- 
forth, compelled,  being  unable  to  live  otherwise,  to  sell 
the  use  of  that  power  to  the  capitalists  who  hold  in  their 
possession  the  things  indispensable  for  labor.  Through 
their  possession  of  the  things  indispensable  for  the  func- 
tioning of  labor-power,  the  capitalists  are,  in  fact,  masters 
of  all  who  cannot  utilize  their  own  power  themselves, 
nor  live  without  utilizing  it.  From  this  economic  de- 
pendence flows  the  existence  of  distinct  classes,  distinct 
in  spite  of  the  civil  and  political  equality  of  their  mem- 
bers; and,  as  the  capitalist  regime  expropriates  the  Middle 
Class  more  and  more,  it  tends  to  accentuate  the  division 
of  society  into  two  principal  classes:  on  the  one  hand, 
those  who  control  the  means  of  labor;  on  the  other,  those 
for  whom  the  actual  use  of  those  means  is  the  sole  pos- 
sibility of  life. 

I  will  ask  you  to  note  that  I  speak  of  classes  and  not  of 


—   11   — 

orders  or  estates,  because  these  last  expressions  imply  a 
legal  demarcation  between  the  categories  of  persons  which 
they  indicate;  while  the  word  class  simply  denotes,  accord- 
ing to  Littre,1  the  "grades  established  among  men  by  the 
diversity  and  inequality  of  their  circumstances."  This  is 
the  reason  that  some  among  us  refuse  to  make  use  of  the 
expression  "Fourth  Estate."  There  are  no  longer  any 
Estates,  it  is  true,  but  it  is  not  the  less  true  that  there  still 
are  classes.  As  no  one  among  us  any  longer  dares  to 
approve  of  their  existence,  to  deny  it  is  the  only  way  to 
avoid  combatting  it.  And  so  it  is  this  denial  that  is 
resorted  to  by  those  adversaries  of  socialism  whose  only 
"weapons  are  falsehood  and  hypocrisy.  Socialists  are  not 
the  cause  of  the  existence  of  classes  because  they  recognize 
their  existence.  They  limit  themselves  to  establishing 
that  which  has  been,  that  which  is  and  that  which  is 
destined  to  be:  the  origin  of  classes,  their  present  per- 
sistence and  their  approaching  disappearance. 

As  soon  as,  thanks  to  the  development  of  the  faculties 
of  man  and  to  his  industrial  discoveries,  the  productivity 
of  labor  became  great  enough  for  an  individual  to  be  able 
to  produce  more  than  was  indispensable  for  his  main- 
tenance, the  division  of  society  into  two  great  classes, 
the  exploiters  and  the  exploited,  was  effected.  And  this 
division  had  its  justification,  so  long  as  production  was  not 
sufficient  to  render  comfort  for  all  a  possibility.  But, 
thanks  to  machinery  and  to  scientific  appliances  which 
facilitate  labor,  while  vastly  multiplying  the  supply  of 
articles  of  consumption,  the  exhausting  labor  of  the 

1  The  French  Webster. 


—     12     — 

masses  and  the  monopolization  of  comfort  by  a  minority 
can  henceforth  give  place,  must  henceforth  give  place, 
and  will  give  place  in  a  future  which  no  longer  seems 
distant,  to  the  universalization  of  labor  and  its  inevitable 
consequence,  the  universalization  of  comfort  and  of 
leisure,  that  is  to  say,  to  social  conditions  under  which 
there  will  be  no  classes,  because  their  existence  will  (as 
now)  serve  no  useful  end  as  it  has  done  in  the  past.  We 
will  soon  see  that  our  present  ruling  class,  far  from  being 
useful,  is  already  becoming  baneful. 

To-day,  if  the  existence  of  distinct  classes  has,  appar- 
ently, lost  all  legal  sanction,  it  is  just  as  real  a  fact  as 
ever.  To  deny  it,  one  must  have — pardon  me  the  expres- 
sion, but  I  can  find  no  other  defining  as  accurately  this 
state  of  mind — the  desire  to  play  the  fool,  or  the  interest 
to  do  so.  It  is  impossible  to  deny  seriously  that  a  part 
of  the  population  is,  in  fact,  through  the  form  of  the 
economic  relations,  through  their  material  self-interest, 
through  their  need  of  food,  placed  in  a  position  of  depen- 
dence upon  another  portion  of  the  population,  and  that 
there  is  an  antagonism  between  those  who  must  struggle 
to  exist  by  working  and  those  who  can  bargain  out  to 
them  the  means  of  labor.1 

By  proclaiming  the  existence  of  classes  and  their  antag- 
onism, by  divulging  that  antagonism,  which  is  not  their 
work,  on  the  political  rostrum,  socialists  are  not  creating 
factitious  distinctions,  they  are  not  resuscitating  and  do 

1  "In  fact  the  different  classes  dove-tail  into  each  other, 
and  there  are  always  between  two  classes  a  multitude  of 
unclassifiable  hybrids,  belonging  wholly  to  neither  class,  in 
part  to  both." — Karl  Kautsky. 


—     13     — 

not  dream  of  resuscitating  any  of  the  social  forms  so  for- 
tunately and  so  energetically  annihilated  by  the  French 
Revolution.,  they  are  only  adapting  themselves  to  the 
situation  as  it  presents  itself  to  them  now. 

In  fact,  modern  industry  is  forcing  the  workers  more 
and  more  every  day  to  comprehend  the  necessity  of  asso- 
ciation or  combination  in  their  disputes  with  the  posses- 
sors of  the  means  of  labor,  and  thus  the  interests  to  be 
defended  have  to  the  workers  less  and  less  the  false 
aspect  of  individual  interests;  they  appear  to  them  in 
their  naked  reality  as  class  interests.  Born  of  strikes,  of 
coalitions  of  every  kind  imposed  upon  them  by  the  cus- 
toms and  conditions  of  life  in  a  capitalist  society,  their 
class  activity  soon  takes  an  a  political  character.  To  this 
then  are  due  the  working-class  agitations  resulting  in  the 
recognition  of  political  equality  and  the  establishment 
of  universal  suffrage.  In  possession  of  political  rights, 
the  workingmen  are  obviously  led  to  make  use  of  these 
rights  in  behalf  of  their  own  interests.  Inevitably,  there- 
fore, the  political  struggle  is  becoming  more  and  more  a 
class  struggle  which  cannot  end  until  the  political  power, 
in  the  hands  of  the  workingmen,  shall  at  last  place  the 
State  at  the  service  of  the  interests  of  all  the  exploited, 
and  thus  enable  the  latter  to  proceed  to  the  economic 
reforms  which  will  lead  to  the  disappearance  of  classes  as 
a  direct  consequence. 

Therefore,  the  Class  Struggle  is  not  an  invention  of  the 
socialists,  but  the  very  substance  of  the  facts  and  acts  of 
history  in  the  making  that  are  daily  taking  place  under 
their  eyes. 


III. 

We  know  that  those  whose  activity  is  subordinate  in 
its  exercise  to  a  capital  which  they  have  not — and  these 
compose  the  working-class — are  compelled  to  sell  their 
labor-power  to  some  of  the  possessors  of  this  capital  who 
form,  on  their  side,  the  bourgeois1  class. 

What  is  sold  by  him  who  has  to  labor  in  order  to  live, 
and  who  has  not  in  his  possession  the  means  of  labor,  to 
the  possessor  of  those  means  is  simply  labor  in  the  poten- 
tial state,  that  is  the  muscular  or  intellectual  faculties 
that  must  be  exerted  in  the  production  of  useful  things. 
In  fact,  on  the  one  hand,  before  these  faculties  are 
brought  into  active  exercise,  labor  does  not  exist  and 
cannot  be  sold.  Now,  the  contract  is  made  between  the 
buyer  and  the  seller  before  any  action  takes  place  and  has 
for  its  effective  cause,  so  far  as  the  seller  is  concerned, 
the  fact  that  the  seller  is  so  situated  that  he  can  not  by 
himself  bring  his  capacity  for  labor  into  productive  use. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  soon  as  the  action  (labor)  begins, 
as  soon  as  labor  manifests  itself,  it  cannot  be  the  property 
of  the  laborer,  for  it  consists  in  nothing  but  the  incorpor- 
ation of  a  thing  which  the  laborer  has  just  alienated  by 

1  In  America  where,  since  1865,  we  have  had  no  landed 
aristocracy,  bourgeois  and  wealthy  are  well  nigh  synonymous. 
— Tr. 


—     15     — 

sale — capacity  to  perform  labor — with  other  things  which 
are  not  his — the  means  of  production. 

To  sum  up,  when  the  labor  does  not  exist,  the  laborer 
can  not'  sell  that  which  he  does  not  possess  and  which  he 
has  not  the  means  of  realizing;  when  the  lator  does  exist, 
it  can  not  be  sold  by  the  laborer  to  whom  it  does  not 
belong.  The  only  thing  which  the  laborer  can  sell  is  his 
labor-power,  a  power  distinct  from  its  function,  labor, 
just  as  the  power  of  marching  is  distinct  from  a  parade, 
just  as  any  machine  is  distinct  from  its  operations. 

What  is  paid  under  the  form  of  wages  by  the  possessor 
of  the  means  of  labor,  the  purchaser  of  the  labor- 
power  to  the  possessor  of  tha"t  power,  cannot, 
therefore,  be,  and  is  not,  the  price  of  the  labor  fur- 
nished, but  is  the  price  of  the  power  made  use  of,  a 
price  that  supply  and  demand  cause  to  oscillate  about  and 
especially  below  its  value  determined,  like  the  value  of 
any  other  commodity,  by  the  labor-time  socially  necessary 
for  its  production,  or  in  other  words,  in  this  case  by  the 
sum  which  will  normally  enable  the  laborer  to  maintain 
and  perpetuate  his  labor-power  under  the  conditions 
necessary  for  the .given  kind  and  stage  of  production. 

But,  even  when  the  laborer  gets  a  value  equal  to  the 
value  of  his  power,  he  furnishes  a  value  greater  than  that 
which  he  receives.  The  duration  of  labor  required  for  a 
given  wage,  regularly  exceeds  the  time  necessarily  occu- 
pied by  the  laborer  in  adding  to  the  value  of  the  means  of 
production  consumed,  a  value  equal  to  that  wage;  and 
the  labor  thus  furnished  over  and  above  that  which  repre- 
sents the  equivalent  of  what  the  laborer  gets,  constitutes 
surplus-labor.  SURPLUS-LABOR  THEN  is  UNPAID  LABOR. 


—     16     — 

And  here  let  us  be  clearly  understood.  When  we  speak 
of  unpaid  labor,  we  are  stating  a  simple  fact,  and  do  not 
at  all  intend  to  say  that  capitalists,  in  the  existing  state 
of  things,  are  personally  guilty  of  extracting  from  the 
laborers  labor  for  which  they  do  not  pay  them.  We  are 
not  of  the  number  of  those  who  think  that  "the 
causes  of  the  ills  from  which  we  suffer  are  to 
be  found  in  men  rather  than  institutions,"  as 
M.  Glasson  declared  before  the  members  of  the 
Le  Play  School.  We  say  exactly  the  contrary;  for 
us  the  evil  is  due  to  institutions  rather  than  to  men  and, 
in  society  as  it  is  at  present  constituted,  things  cannot 
possibly  take  place  in  any  other  or  different  fashion. 

On  the  side  of  the  laborer,  the  thing  sold,  as  I  have 
proved,  cannot  be  his  labor.  It  is  his  labor-power.  The 
sum  paid  cannot  be  the  price  of  his  labor.  It  is  the  price 
of  his  labor-power,  a  price  which,  in  view  qf  the  number 
of  applicants  for  work,  can  only  very  rarely  be  equal  to  its 
value;  but,  even  in  this  case,  he  furnishes  a  greater  value 
than  he  receives.  If  he  does  not,  his  remuneration  is 
not,  strictly  speaking,  wages,  for  the  furnishing  of  surplus- 
labor  by  the  worker  is  a  condition  sine  qua  non  of  wages. 
When  his  compensation  is  split  up  into  wages  and  supple- 
mentary remuneration  under  the  form  of  profit-sharing 
or  under  any  other  form,  the  workingman  does  not 
furnish  less  surplus-labor,  less  unpaid  labor;  quite 
the  contrary,  we  may  say,  for  it  is  clear  that 
this  supplementary  remuneration,  for  the  laborer, 
is  a  mere  delusion,  mere  supplementary  moon- 
shine. All  that  the  workingman  can  hope  to  achieve, 
under,  I  repeat,  the  existing  organization  of  society,  is 


—     17     — 

the  curtailment  of  his  surplus-labor,  and  that  is  the 
explanation  and  justification  of  the  struggle  for  the 
reduction  of  the  working-day,  of  the  Eight  Hours  move- 
ment. 

On  the  side  of  the  capitalist,  on  account  of  the  fierce 
war  of  competition  with  low  prices  as  weapons  which 
rages  throughout  the  field  of  production,  it  is  financial 
suicide  for  the  employer  to  extract  from  his  work-people 
less  unpaid  labor  than  his  competitors  do;  and  that  is 
why  it  is  necessary  to  strive  to  obtain  the  reduction  of 
the  day  by  legal  enactment.  I  add  that  so  long  as  the 
employer,  so  long  as  the  capitalist  keeps  within  the 
bounds  of  what  may  be  called  the  normal  conditions  of 
exploitation,  he  cannot  reasonably  be  held  responsible  for 
the  economic  structure  which  is  so  advantageous  to  him, 
but  which  the  best  of  intentions  on  the  part  of  individuals 
would  be  powerless  to  modify.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
capitalists  are  personally  powerless  to  ameliorate  the  state 
of  affairs,  it  would  be  rash  to  rush  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  are  capitalists  in  the  interest  of  the  workers.  We 
must  avoid  exaggeration  in  either  direction. 

Surplus-labor  was  not  invented  by  the  capitalists.  Ever 
since  human  societies  issued  from  the  state  of  primitive 
communism,  surplus-labor  has  always  existed;  and  it  is 
the  method  by  which  it  is  wrung  from  the  immediate 
producers,  which  differentiates  the  different  economic 
forms  of  society. 

Before  man  was  able  to  produce  in  excess  of  his  needs, 
one  portion  of  society  could  not  live  upon  the  fruits  of  trie 
toil  of  another  portion.  How  could  a  man  work  gratui- 
tously for  others  when  his  entire  time  was  barely  suffi- 


—     18     — 

cient  to  procure  him  his  own  necessary  means  of  existence? 
When,  in  consequence  of  human  progress,  labor  had 
acquired  such  a  degree  of  productiveness  that  an  individ- 
ual was  enabled  to  produce  more  than  what  was  strictly 
necessary  for  his  needs,  it  became  possible  for  some  to 
subsist  upon  the  toil  of  others  and  slavery  could  be  estab- 
lished. 

That  it  was  established  by  force  is  not  doubtful;  but  it 
must  be  confessed  that  its  establishment  promoted 
human  evolution.  So  long  as  the  productiveness  of 
labor,  although  sufficient  to  make  surplus-labor  possible, 
was  not  sufficient  to  render  participation  in  directly 
useful  labor  compatible  with  other  occupations  or  pur- 
suits, the  toilsome  drudgery  and  exploitation  of  some 
was  the  necessary  condition  of  the  leisure  of  others,  and, 
thereby,  of  the  development  of  all.  For,  if  none  had  had 
leisure,  no  progress  could  have  been  made  in  the  sciences, 
the  arts  and  all  the  branches  of  knowledge,  the  benefits  of 
which  we  all  enjoy  in  some  degree.  And  the  factthat 
the  thinkers  of  antiquity  and  the  greatest  among  them, 
Aristotle,  excused  slavery,  is  a  proof  that  the  mode  of 
thought  is  determined  by  the  exigencies  of  the  economic 
organization  of  society.  To  reproach  Aristotle,  in  par- 
ticular, because  he  did  not  regard  slavery  and  prpperty 
as  it  is  natural  for  us  to  regard  them,  is  equivalent  to 
reproaching  him  for  not  having  applied  the  processes  of 
our  modern  production  to  ancient  industries. 

Slavery  did  not  appear  to  lack  a  rational  foundation, 
and  did  not  begin  to  disappear  until  the  external  condi- 
tions were  profoundly  transformed  and  thus  rendered 
another  kind  of  labor  and  of  surplus-labor  more  in  har- 


—     19     — 

mony  with  the  material  requirements.  Following  upon 
the  economic  environment  in  which  slavery  was  the  rule 
there  came  then  the  economic  environment  in  which 
serfdom  predominated,  and  the  latter,  in  its  turn,  has 
been  superseded  by  the  economic  environment  in  which 
the  wage-system  has  become  the  general  rule.  Each  of 
these  environments  has  had  or  has  its  own  habits  and 
modes  of  thought  which  may  be  in  contradiction  with 
ours,  but  which  are  the  natural  consequences  of  the  modes 
of  life  in  vogue  in  their  respective  eras. 

An  examination  of  the  aspect  of  surplus-labor  in  these 
three  environments  shows  that  it  has  the  appearance  of 
being  all  labor  in  the  first,  a  larger  or  smaller  fraction  of 
the  whole  labor  in  the  second,  and  apparently  falls  to  zero 
in  the  third.  In  fact,  in  slavery,  during  a  part  of  the 
day,  the  slave  only  replaces  the  value  of  what  he  con- 
sumes and  so  really  works  for  himself;  notwithstanding, 
even  then  his  labor  appears  to  be  labor  for  his  owner. 
All  his  labor  has  the  appearance  of  surplus-labor,  of  labor 
for  others.  Under  serfdom  or  the  corvee  system,  the 
labor  of  the  serf  for  himself  and  his  gratuitous  labor  for 
his  feudal  lord  are  perfectly  distinct,  the  one  from  the 
other;  by  the  very  way  in  which  the  labor  is  performed, 
the  serf  distinguishes  the  time  during  which  he  works  for 
his  own  benefit  from  the  time  which  he  is  compelled  to 
devote  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  wants  of  his  lordly 
superiors.  Under  the  wage-system,  the  wage-form,  which 
appears  in  the  guise  of  direct  payment  of  labor,  wipes  out 
every  visible  line  of  demarcation  between  paid  labor  and 
unpaid  labor;  when  he  receives  his  wages,  the  laborer 
seems  to  get  all  the  value  due  to  his  labor,  so  that  all  his 


—     20     — 

labor  takes  on  the  form  or  appearance  of  paid  labor. 
"While,  under  slavery,  the  property-relation  conceals  the 
labor  of  the  slave  for  himself,  under  the  wage-system  the 
money-relation  conceals  the  gratuitous  labor  of  the  wage- 
worker  for  the  capitalist.  You  will  readily  perceive  the 
practical  importance  of  this  disguised  appearance  of  the 
real  relation  between  labor  and  capital.  The  latter  is 
deemed  to  breed  or  expand  by  its  own  virtue,  and  the  for- 
mer to  receive  its  full  remuneration. 


—     21    — 


rv. 

Wage-labor  as  an  economic  form  existed  before  the 
actual  appearance  of  industrial  capital  which  in  fact 
only  dates  from  the  day  when  production  by  the  aid  of 
wage-labor  became  general.  Capital,  in  fact,  is  not  a 
quality  with  which  the  means  of  production  are  naturally 
endowed,  which  they  have  always  had  and  which  they 
are  destined  always  to  have.  It  is  a  character  which  they 
possess  only  under  definite  social  conditions.  The  means 
of  production  are  no  more  naturally  capital  than  a  negro 
is  naturally  a  slave.  And  when  socialists  talk  of  sup- 
pressing capital  and  capitalists,  those  who  do  not  wish  to 
make  a  ridiculous  confusion,  ought  to  remember  that  it 
is  simply  a  question  of  taking  away  from  the  means  of 
production  and  those  who  hold  possession  of  them  a 
character  which  they  now  have,  and  which  can  be  taken 
from  them  without  destroying  an  atom  of  their  material 
substance,  just  as  in  suppressing  slavery,  it  is  not  neces- 
sary, in  order  to  take  away  the  slave-character  from  the 
negro,  to  kill  the  negro. 

For  a  long  time  capital  was  known  only  under  the 
form  of  merchants'  capital  and  usurers'  capital;  for  it  was 
only,  or  almost  only,  under  those  two  forms  that  money 
bred  its  like,  and  it  is  this  possibility  of  money's  breeding 
which  constitutes  capital.  This  possibility  could  not 


exist,  except  as  an  exceptional  fact,  for  money  invested 
in  the  means  of  production,  so  long  as  industry  remained 
more  or  less  domestic  in  character.  In  order  for  capital 
to  spread  beyond  the  domain  of  commerce  in  goods  and 
money  and  appear  in  the  domain  of  production,  it  was 
necessary  for  the  wealth  accumulated  in  commerce  and 
usury  to  effect  on  a  large  scale  the  concentration  of  the 
scattered  petty  producers  and  their  petty  individual  tools; 
the  workshop  had  to  be  enlarged;  it  was  necessary  to  bring 
together  a  large  number  of  workers  working  at  the  same 
time,  in  the  same  place,  under  the  orders  of  the  same  "cap- 
tain of  industry,"  in  producing  on  a  large  scale  the  same 
kind  of  commodity,  and  to  find  for  the  disposal  of  the 
latter  a  sufficiently  extended  market. 

The  money  advanced  in  production  can,  in  fact,  realize 
an  appreciable  profit  by  the  sale  of  the  objects  produced, 
only  when  its  possessor  is  able  to  realize  a  certain  quantity 
of  surplus-labor;  now,  to  accomplish  this  he  must  have  a 
certain  number  of  laborers.  For  it  is  the  surplus-labor 
realized,  we  know,  that  forms  the  excess  of  the  value  pro- 
duced over  that  of  the  money  laid  out  in  production,  or, 
in  other  words,  the  surplus-value  which  incessantly  swells 
the  capital  and  continually  increases  its  power  to  dominate 
labor. 

The  capitalist  mode  of  production,  the  mode  of  produc- 
tion in  which,  the  means  of  labor  function  as  capital, 
owes  to  capital  its  specific  character,  which  is  its  power 
of  making  money  breed  money,  of  giving  birth  to  surplus- 
value.  The  capitalist  purchaser  of  labor-power  has  only 
one  object,  viz.,  to  enrich  himself  by  making  his  money 
breed  or  expand,  by  the  process  of  making  commodities 


—     23     — 

containing  more  labor  than  he  pays  for,  and  by  selling 
which  he  therefore  realizes  a  value  greater  than  that  of 
the  sum  of  the  advances  or  outlays  made. 

If,  since  the  productiveness  of  labor  has  made  it  pos- 
sible, one  part  of  society  has,  under  various  economic 
forms,  been  forced  to  add  to  the  labor-time  required  for 
its  own  support,  a  certain  amount  of  surplus-labor-time, 
for  which  it  has  received  no  equivalent  and  the  benefit  of 
which  has  been  enjoyed  by  another  part  of  society,  it  is 
likewise  true  that  so  long  as  the  aim  of  production  was  to 
enable  the  privileged  class  to  appropriate  the  means  of 
consumption  and  enjoyment,  the  surplus-labor  of  the 
immediate  producers  reached  its  limit  with  the  full  satis- 
faction of  those  needs  and  desires,  as  extensive  as  they 
might  be,  to  gratify  which  was  the  object  of  this  appro- 
priation. But  as  soon  as  it  becomes  a  question  of  obtain- 
ing, instead  of  a  certain  mass  of  products,  the  production 
at  any  cost  of  surplus-value,  the  incessant  multiplication 
of  money,  the  possessor  of  the  means  of  production 
strives  relentlessly  to  make  those  means  of  production 
absorb  the  greatest  possible  quantity  of  surplus-labor. 

If  this  insatiable  thirst  for  and  headlong  pursuit  of 
surplus-value  has  been  for  the  laborers  and  their  families 
the  cause  of  an  exploitation  of  their  labor-power,  more 
burdensome  than  any  form  of  exploitation  previously 
known,  it  must  be  recognized  that  it  has  contributed  to 
the  development  of  the  means  of  production.  It  is  with 
capital  as  with  slavery.  Both,  sources  of  sufferings  for 
their  victims,  they  have  been,  on  the  whole,  sources  of 
progress  for  humanity.  The  history  of  human  progress 
is  far  from  being  an  idyl.  Our  too  forgetful  and 


—     24    — 

too  proud  civilization  is  the  result  of  a  long  series  oi 
torments  and  miseries  endured  by  the  nameless  and  for- 
gotten masses. 

Therefore  capital  has  had  its  utility,  and  the  era  of 
capitalist  production  constitutes  a  great  step  forward 
in  the  evolution  of  the  productive  powers.  Beginning 
with  the  enlargement  of  the  small  guild  workshop,  passing 
through  action  in  common,  the  co-operation  of  a  large 
number  of  laborers  in  the  enlarged  workshop  through 
the  manufacturing  stage,  by  the  division  of  labor  within 
the  workshop,  by  the  introduction  and  general  adoption 
of  the  machine-tool,  by  the  employment  of  steam  as  a 
motive  power,  capitalist  production  has  finally  developed 
into  modern  mechanical  industry  which  has  revolution- 
ized the  mode  of  production  more  radically  than  had  any 
previous  change.  It  is  its  continuous  and  radical  alter- 
ation of  the  technical  processes  which  distinguishes  the 
capitalist  period  from  all  the  preceding  periods,  and  pre- 
vents it  from  having  the  relatively  permanent  conserva- 
tive character  which  they  had. 


V. 

What  are  the  results  of  these  revolutions  in  industrial 
methods,  and  what  are  their  tendencies? 

Machinery  is  more  and  more  seizing  upon  all  industries, 
and,  instead  of  making  use  of  his  tool,  the  laborer  is  the 
servant  of  the  machine.  The  relative  ease  of  work  of  this 
kind  makes  it  possible  to  substitute  unskilled  labor  for 
skilled  labor,  women  and  children  for  men.  By  thus 
throwing  men  out  of  work,  the  instrument  of  labor  lowers 
wages  and  expropriates  the  laborer  from  his  means  of 
existence.  This  machinery,  thanks  to  which  the  genius 
of  Aristotle  foresaw  the  possibility  of  the  emancipation 
of  the  slave,  has  as  yet  been  merely  a  cause  of  enslavement, 
and  just  as  man  is  moulded  by  the  economic  environment 
which  is  his  own  work,  he  is  here  enslaved  by  his  own 
product. 

With  the  extension  of  the  system  of  mechanical  indus- 
try, the  product  ceases  more  and  more  to  be  the  work  of 
an  individual.  The  individual  by  himself  alone  no  longer 
makes  a  product,  but  a  fraction  of  a  product, 
and  the  owner  no  longer  works  with  his  in- 
strument of  labor,  or,  in  other  words,  uses  his  property 
himself,  but  turns  this  task  over  to  a  certain  number  of 
laborers,  to  a  group  of  wage-slaves.  Thus,  when  the  pos- 
sessor of  a  hand-saw  works  with  it,  the  owner  uses  his 


—     26     — 

own  property;  with  the  machine-saw,  it  is  used  not  by  the 
owner,  but  by  the  laborers,  whom  he  has  to  employ  to 
operate  it.  While  the  operation  of  the  means  of  produc- 
tion so  largely  augmented  requires  the  common  action  of 
a  host  of  workers,  the  undertakings  and  establishments 
grow  to  such  dimensions  that  the  vast  sums  of  capital 
necessary  for  their  conduct  are  not  to  be  found  in  the 
hands  of  a  single  capitalist.  Having  become  too  gigantic 
for  a  single  capitalist,  the  title  or  nominal  ownership  of 
these  means  of  production,  and  along  with  it  the  profits, 
passes  from  the  individual  capitalist  to  an  association  of 
capitalists,  to  a  company  of  stockholders.  This  com- 
pany actually  has,  considered  as  a  collective  body,  a  par- 
ticular tangible  property;  but  what  does  this  property 
represent  for  each  individual  shareholder?  A  fiction. 
The  individual  stockholder  cannot  lay  his  finger  upon 
any  particular  material  object  and  say:  that  is  mine. 

While  the  means  of  production  are  thus  ceasing  to  be 
in  the  strict  sense  private  property,  and  require  for  their 
actual  operation  a  collective  body  of  laborers,  while  the 
product  is  becoming  a  social  product,  the  owners  of  the 
means  of  production  and  the  products,  are  becoming 
shareholders,  and  thus  ceasing  to  perform  any  useful 
function,  to  have  any  real  utility.  The  success  of  a 
business  in  former  times  depended  upon  the  energy  and 
skill  of  its  proprietor,  just  as  it  sometimes  does  to-day  in 
small  manufacturing  or  mercantile  establishments.  Since 
the  introduction  of  stock  companies,  the  producing  or- 
ganism is  no  longer  affected  by  the  personal  traits  of 
those  who  own  it;  it  does  not  know  the  shareholder,  the 
present  multiple  proprietor,  any  more  than  the  latter 


—    27    — - 

knows  his  property;  it  functions  independently  of  him, 
and  does  not  feel  his  influence,  so  that  even  a  change  of 
ownership  has  no  effect  upon  it.  The  former  functions 
of  the  proprietor  are  at  the  present  time  performed  by 
wage-workers,  trained  engineers  or  managers,  more 
or  less  well  paid,  but  still  wage-workers.  In 
place  of  the  managing  proprietor,  we  have  then 
a  salaried  manager,  and  he  is  a  better  manager 
because  he  is  only  a  salaried  employee,  as  M.  de  Molinari 
admits,  when  he  writes:  "All  that  is  requisite  is  for  him 
to  possess  the  ability,  knowledge  and  character  demanded 
for  his  functions,  and  these  are  all  qualities  which  are 
more  easily  and  cheaply  obtained  on  the  market,  divorced 
from  capital  than  united  to  it."1 

Not  only  is  the  proprietary  class,  "the  haves/'  losing 
all  social  utility,  but,  more  than  this,  it  is  becoming  bane- 
ful through  its  exclusive  pre-occupation  with  personal 
profits.  Baneful  it  is  henceforth  for  all  branches  of 
social  production  which  the  mad  and  unorganized  pur- 
suit of  profits  subjects  to  disastrous  perturbations,  to 
periodical  crises  swamping  the  market  and  lasting  amid 
failures  and  shut-downs  until  the  outlets  for  goods  once 
more  open  up;  baneful  for  all  the  workers,,  worked  to  utter 
exhaustion  in  periods  of  business  activity  and  reduced  to 
wretched  poverty  in  periods  of  industrial  depression,  dar- 
ing which  they  suffer  from  want  of  everything,  because 
there  is,  relatively  to  the  purchasing  power  of  the  people, 
too  much  of  everything — (here  we  see  once  more  the 
creator  dominated  by  the  creation,  the  producers  by  their 

1  L'Evolution  economique,  p.  38. 


products,  just  as  in  the  cases  formerly  noticed  of  the 
-  human  intelligence  and  the  economic  environment,  of 
the  machine  and  the  workman);  baneful  for  all  consumers, 
who  are  victims  of  the  adulteration  of  products  begotten 
by  the  mad  strife  for  gain;  baneful  for  the  petty  capitalists, 
the  small  producers  in  constant  danger  of  bankruptcy  and 
ruin  through  the  intensity  of  the  war  of  competition 
which  always  results  in  the  victory  of  the  great  capitalists 
or  the  great  combinations  of  capital  (trusts,  etc.). 

To  recapitulate,  our  economic  movement  tends  toward 
labor  in  common,  since  the  operation  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction is  passing  from  the  working-proprietor  to  a  collec- 
tive group  of  laborers,  and  toward  the  elimination  of  the 
mode  or  form  of  private  or  individual  ownership  of  the 
means  of  production,  since  the  nominal  property  in  them 
is  passing  from  the  individual  proprietor  to  a  collective 
body  of  shareholders  (stock-company  or  trust).  It  also 
tends  to  leave  the  proprietary  class  no  useful  role  or  func- 
tion, thus  making  them  for  the  future  not  only  super- 
fluous, but  baneful. 

At  the  same  time  that  the  organization  of  labor  adapted 
to  the  present  form  and  state  of  the  productive  forces  is 
escaping  from  the  hands  of  the  proprietary  class  and  is 
thus  the  signal  that  the  close  of  its  historic  career  is  at 
hand,  it  is  concentrating  and  organizing  men  everywhere 
in  the  same  way  that  it  concentrates  material  wealth.  It 
brings  the  laborers  together  and  leads  them,  through  their 
identity  in  position  and  interests,  to  combine  in  groups 
or  unions,  it  constitutes  them  into  a  class,  more  and  more 
conscious  of  its  situation,  disciplines  their  masses  system- 
atically arranged  and  graded  in  each  industrial  establish- 


—     29     — 

ment,  and  fashions  out  of  their  own  ranks  an  intellectual 
aristocracy  upon  which  devolves, the  function  of  super- 
intending and  managing  all  industries. 

And  while  the  individual  form  of  their  petty  tools  or 
instruments  of  labor,  and  their  mode  of  production  which 
keeps  them  in  independent  isolation,  engender  in  the 
workers  in  petty  industries  ideas  too  individualistic  and 
egoistic,  wherever  modern  mechanical  industry  has  al- 
ready wrested  from  the  laborer  his  tool  and  transformed 
it  into  a  mechanical  apparatus  effacing  individuality  from 
the  labor-process,  wherever  individual  labor  merges  into 
and  blends  with  collective  labor,  wherever  the  technical 
processes  are  such  that  the  task  of  each  is  of  service  only 
through  the  participation  (co-operation)  of  all,  and  is 
itself  the  condition  of  the  performance  of  the  collective 
task,  the  strictly  individualistic  tendencies  of  the  pro- 
ducers in  the  petty  industries  are  replaced  by  the  spirit  of 
solidarity,  which/ with  the  progress  of  industrial  develop- 
ment, is  leading — nay,  forcing  the  working  class  every 
day  more  and  more  toward  socialist  ideas,  ideas  which 
spring  from  the  material  necessities  which  inexorably 
force  their  way  into  the  minds  -of  men. 

These  are  facts  against  which  our  personal  preferences 
are  of  no  avail.  The  material  and  intellectual  elements 
of  the  collective  (or  co-operative)  form  of  production, 
elaborated  by  the  capitalist  regime,  are  thus  developing 
more  and  more  every  day,  and  socialism  is,  you  see,  the 
natural  consequence  of  existent  conditions.  It  is  not 
something  imported  from  abroad  and  added  to  our  social 
movement,  neither  is  it  an  article  of  export  good  for  any 
sort  of  economic  environment;  it  is  the  rigorous  con- 


.      —     30    — 

sequence  of  a  certain  orderly  sequence  of  facts,  the  result 
of  a  definite  evolution* whose  progress  it  has  noted,  but 
which  has  taken  place  independently  of  it;  it  has  not 
created  it  because  it  has  been  conscious  of  its- existence. 
And  so,  as  M.  Paul  Leroy-Beaulieu  recognizes:  "the 
field  of  modern  mechanical  industry  is  extending  its  boun- 
daries more  and  more,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  limits 
can  be  set  to  its  possible  extension/'  Now  it  is  modern 
industry  which  lays  bare  the  antagonisms  immanent  in 
capitalist  production,  and  at  the  same  time  renders  their 
destruction  possible.  The  historic  role  of  capital  has 
been  the  development  of  the  productive  powers,  and,  in 
the  process  of  developing  them,  it  has  created  the  weap- 
ons which  are  destined  to  kill  i"t.  Necessary  during  a  cer- 
tain stage  of  economic  development,  it  is  not  eternal,  but 
inevitably  comes  to  an  end  with  a  change  in  the  relations 
of  the  means  of  production  to  the  producers. 


—     31    — - 


VI. 

The  preparation  and  training  of  the  working-class  (for 
their  high  functions)  by  the  productive  powers,  the  grow- 
ing and  inevitable  development  and  crystallization  of  the 
collective  tendencies  of  the  latter,  the  increasing  incom- 
patability  between  their  essential  character  and  their 
private  ownership,  all  lead  to  a  new  economic  regime  in 
which  they  will  be  owned  and  controlled  collectively  just 
as  they  are  operated  collectively,  in  which  they  will  be 
conducted  by  society  and  for  society.  And  all  the  social- 
ism of  the  socialists  consists  of  wishing  to  perpetuate  in  a 
fully  developed  form  the  present  social  character  of  the 
material  conditions  of  life. 

I  say  socialism  of  the  socialists  because  we  have  seen 
flourish  in  our  day  a  peculiar  socialism,  the  socialism  of 
those  good  people  who  earnestly  wish  to  remove  the 
inconveniences  and  injustices  of  our  present  social  state, 
but  who  also  wish  a  little  more  earnestly  to  preserve  the 
cause  of  these  inconveniences,  who  wish  at  once  to 
suppress  or  abolish  the  proletariat  and  to  preserve  the 
capitalist  form  of  society.  It  is  quite  possible  for  social- 
ism also  to  have  its  converts  and  even  its  backsliders;  it 
asks  its  adherents,  not  whence  they  come,  but  to  go 
whither  it  is  going,  or,  at  least,  to  permit  it  to  proceed 
upon  its  road  without  attempting  to  turn  it  aside  from 


—     32     — 

it.  As  one  of  our  adversaries  declares,  we  can  say  in  our 
turn: /On  one  side  are  the  socialists,  on  the  other  those 
who  are  not  socialists/  and  among  the  latter  may  be 
counted  those  who  accept  the  name  while  rejecting  the 
thing. 

Apart  from  the  socialization  of  the  means  of  labor 
which  have  already  taken  on  a  collective  form,,  there 
may  be  and  there  often  is  charlatanry,  but  there  is  no 
real  possibility  of  emancipation,  there  is  no  socialism. 

So  long  as  the  means  of  labor  and  labor  shall  not  be 
united  in  the  same  hands,  the  means  of  labor  will  retain 
the  character  of  capital,  and  capital  will  inevitably  exploit 
the  workingman  and  wring  from  him  labor  for  which  it 
will  not  pay  him.  The  source  of  the  troubles  of  the 
working-class  is  to  be  found  in  their  expropriation  from 
the  means  of  labor;  now,  the  harder  they  work  on  the 
established  basis  of  expropriation,  the  more  power  they 
give  the  capitalist  class  to  enrich  themselves  and  to 
expropriate  those  who  have  not  yet  entered  the  inner 
circle  of  capitalism.  On  the  basis  of  the  present  gigantic 
forms  of  the  instruments  of  labor,  the  collective  means 
of  labor  and  labor  itself  can  be  united  in  the  same  hands, 
only  by  the  transformation  of  the  capitalist  ownership  of 
these  means  of  labor  into  social  ownership,  only  by  the 
transformation  of  capitalist  production  into  social  pro- 
duction. The  logical  consequence  of  the  material  facts 
of  the  existing  environment,  this  transformation,  the 
socialization  of  the  means  of  production  having  collective 
tendencies,  is  possible,  and  it  appears  as  the  only  practi- 
cal method  of  emancipating  the  laborers,  of  emancipating 
society  as  a  whole. 


—     33     — 

Emancipated  the  laborers  will  be,  since  their  lives  will 
no  longer  be  dependent  upon  the  means  of  labor  mono- 
polized by  others  and  they  will  be  free  to  make  their  lives 
what  they  will.  In  fact,  they  will  freely  choose  the  kind 
of  productive  labor  they*  prefer,  and  all  kinds  of  work 
will,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  supply  and  demand, 
be  reduced  in  varying  proportions  to  definite  quantities 
of  ordinary  labor.  After  once  deducting  from  the  prod- 
uct of  the  labor  of  each  a  portion  which  will  take  the 
place  of  the  present  taxes,  the  portion  necessary  to  replace 
the  means  of  labor  consumed,  to  provide  for  the  extension 
of  the  scale  of  production,  for  insurance  against  disas- 
trous contingencies,  such,  for  instance,  as  floods,  light- 
ning, tornadoes,  etc.,  for  the  support  of  those  incapable 
of  labor,  to  meet  generously  the  expenses  of  adminis- 
tration and  of  satisfying  the  common  requirements  of 
sanitation,  education,  etc.,  the  producers  of  both  sexes 
will  distribute  the  balance  among  themselves,  propor- 
tionally to  the  quantity  of  ordinary  labor  furnished  by 
them  severally.  The  right  of  each  laborer  will  be  equal, 
in  the  sense  that  for  all,  without  distinction,  the  labor 
furnished  will  be  the  measure  alike  for  all,  and  this 
equal  right  may  possibly  lead  to  an  unequal  distribution, 
according  to  the  greater  or  smaller  quantities  of  labor 
furnished.  The  standard  of  rights  in  force  in  an  economic 
environment  cannot  be  superior  in  quality  to  that  environ- 
ment, but  it  will  go  on  increasing  in  perfection  as  the 
environment  advances  toward  perfection,  thus  reducing, 
so  far  as  material  conditions  shall  permit,  the  inequalities 
of  natural  origin. 


—     34     — 

The  important  point  is  that,  from  the  dawn  of  social 
production,  there  will  be  no  more  surplus-labor,  no  more 
classes,  and,  therefore,  no  more  exploitation,  as  there 
inevitably  is  under  capitalist  production.  Every  adult 
able  to  work  will  receive,  under  one  form  or  another., 
partly  in  articles  for  personal  consumption,  partly  in 
social  guarantees,  in  public  services  of  every  kind,  the 
same  quantity  of  labor  that  he  shall  give  to  society.  If 
goods  are  rationed  out,  this  rationing  will  not  be  accom- 
panied by  exploitation;  as  rationing  can  then  be  due 
only  to  a  deficiency  in  personal  or  social  production,  and 
not  to  the  spoliation  which  the  wage-system  implies,  a 
system  under  which  overproduction,  far  from  being 
favorable  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  demand  of  the  work- 
ing-class for  articles  of  consumption,  results  for  them 
in  loss  of  employment  and  starvation  diet. 

During  the  capitalist  period,  it  suffices  for  socialism 
to  establish  the  possibility  of  the  emancipation  of  the 
working-class  and  to  work  for  that  emancipation.  There 
is  no  occasion  to  waste  time  in  working  out  and  settling 
the  details  of  the  organization  of  the  future  society. 
Each  epoch  has  its  task.  Let  us  not  have  the  presump- 
tion to  lay  down  rules  for  those  who  are  to  come  after 
us,  and  let  us  be  content  with  present  duties.  The 
point  upon  which  socialism  trains  its  guns  at  present, 
though  recognizing  the  utility  that  it  has  had  in  the 
past,  is  the  capital-form;  but  let  us  not  forget  that 
the  substance  beneath  this  form  will  be  every  whit  pre- 
served. When  an  office  is  taken  away  from  an  office- 
holder, the  individual  is  left  without  a  hair  the  less.  In 
the  same  way,  in  taking  from  the  means  of  production 


35 


their  function  as  capital,  everything  that  functions  to-day 
under  that  form  will  remain  intact.  Socialism  then 
attacks  the  capital-form,  the  form  only,  and  it  attacks 
it  only  in  so  far  as  the  economic  phenomena  authorize 
such  an  attack.  Everything  which  constitutes  the  sub- 
stance of  capital  will  be  preserved,  the  capital-form  alone 
will  disappear  and  along  with  it  that  power  that  it 
involves  of  exploiting  the  labor  of  others. 

What  will  be  the  fate  of  the  capitalists? 

Capital  appears  to  be  a  collective  power  or  force,  by 
its  origin,  since  it  springs  from  the  accumulated  surplus- 
labor  of  a  collective  body  of  laborers,  by  its  functional 
activity  since  it  also  requires  a  collective  body  of  laborers 
to  enable  it  to  enter  upon  its  functions,  and  by  its 
mode  of  ownership  since,  if  it  is  private  property,  it 
tends  more  and  more  to  be  the  private  property,  not  of 
an  individual,  but  of  a  collective  body,  a  company  or 
trust.  To  make  public  property  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction, which  are  capital  when  they  are  able  to  exploit 
the  labor  of  others  and  which  are  capital  only  on  that 
condition,  is  simply  to  generalize  the  collective  or  social 
character  which  they  already  have. 

Is  the  holder  of  a  share  in  a  mining  or  railway  com- 
pany or  any  sort  of  stock-company  justified  in  speaking 
of  "his"  property?  Where  is  his  property?  In  what  does 
it  consist?  What  can  he  show  if  someone  asks  to  see  it? 
A  machine?.  A  piece  of  real  estate?  No,  simply  one 
or  several  bits  of  paper  which  represent  only  an  infini- 
tesimal fraction  of  an  undivided  whole.  Would  this 
shareholder  be  any  the  less  a  property-owner,  if  this 
undivided  whole  should  become  an  integrant  portion  of 


—     36     — 

the  national  property?  Would  there  be  such  a  great 
difference  between  "his"  property,  as  it  now  is,  and  his 
quota  or  share  in  the  national  property?  Just  as  the 
capitalists  understand  well  enough  to-day  how  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  national  forests,  for  instance,  for  fresh 
air,  pleasure  excursions  afoot  and  awheel,  recreation, 
etc.,  so,  after  the  socialization  of  the  material  objects 
that  make  up  what  is  at  present  capital,  they  would  use 
this  newly  nationalized  property  as  means  of  labor  or 
production. 

This,  then,  would  be  a  true  democratization1  of  prop- 
erty. The  process,  ordinarily  called  by  this  name,  the 
dispersion  of  shares,  stocks  and  bonds,  is  only  the  process 
— called  legitimate — of  extracting  good  hard  cash  from 
all  pockets,  even  those  most  scantily  supplied,  centralizing 
it,  monopolizing  the  real  possession  of  it  in  exchange  for 
a  certificate  of  nominal  ownership,  making  it  breed  or 
expand,  and  permitting  to  flow  back  in  interest,  divi- 
dends, etc.,  only  tiny  crumbs  until  the  day  comes  when 
the  poor  investors  cease  to  get  even  these  microscopical 
returns.  This  pretended  democratization  of  property 
results  simply  in  the  formation  of  a  financial  aristocracy 
creating  scandalous  fortunes  out  of  the  good  dollars  of 
the  small  investors,  and  if  these  dollars,  when  the  paper 
accepted  in  their  stead  is  no  longer  worth  anything,  are 
lost  for  their  former  possesors,  they  are  not  lost  for  every- 
one. (They  have  become  the  reward  of  "abstinence."- 
Tfanslator.) 

1  This  is  not  an  English  word,  but  I  will  take  the  liberty 
of  borrowing  it  from  the  French.— Tr. 


—     37     — 

Let  the  stocks  representing  part-ownership  in  a  com- 
pany lose  all  value— this  is  an  occurrence  that  the  share- 
holders and  bondholders  of  the  Panama  canal,  for 
example,  can  tell  you  is  not  unknown  in  our  bourgeois 
society  —  and  the  shareholder  finds  himself,  in  this 
instance,  permitted  to  enjoy  all  the  blessings  of  expropria- 
tion without  any  indemnifying  compensation;  some- 
times even  he  has  the  delicate  attention  of  an  invitation 
from  the  Receiver  or  the  Courts  to  pour  some  more 
money  into  the  hole  where  his  former  savings  disap- 
peared. Xow  even  in  this  case  the  owners  of  this  sort 
of  personal  property  do  not  make  too  much  ado  about 
the  matter.  Why  should  they  complain  any  more  bitterly 
on  the  day  when  there  will  be,  as  it  were,  only  a  sub- 
stitution of  one  kind  of  stocks  or  shares  for  another, 
wiien  they  will  all  become  stockholders  and  bondholders 
of  the  great  society  (the  Co-operative  Commonwealth), 
instead  of  being  shareholders  and  bondholders  in  one  or 
several  little  societies  or  companies? 

By  this  transformation  they  will  gain  complete  assur- 
ance against  risk  of  loss — a  real  enough  danger  to-day 
when,  after  the  actual  control  of  property  passes  into 
the  hands  of  financial  magnates,  the  revenue  of  the 
nominal  owners,  the  stockholders,  etc.,  falls  to  zero  or 
nearly  zero,  thus  cutting  off  their  means  of  existence 
or  enjoyment.  They  will  lose  only  one  thing:  the 
power  of  dominating  the  labor  of  others  and  of  appro- 
priating its  fruits;  while  they  will  .have  the  privilege 
of  enjoying  the  common  wealth  and  the  advantages 
springing  from  its  co-operative  employment. 


—     38     — 

Healthy  adults  will  take  for  their  own  use,  provided 
they  work,  their  share  of  the  social  products.  If  they 
are  already  accustomed  to  any  kind  of  work,  they  will 
find  no  hardship  in  this  obligation  to  perform  useful 
labor;  if  they  are  not  accustomed  to  it,  they  will  acquire 
the  habit  and  will  find  their  health  greatly  improved 
thereby  in  every  respect.  If  they  are  old  and  infirm 
they  will  be  liberally  provided  for  by  society. 

What  they  can  reasonably  expect  and  insist  upon 
having  is  the  sustenance  of  life  (in  a  broad  sense),1  and 
this  they  will  have,  as  you  see,  in  any  case.  The  social- 
ization will  not  result  in  such  a  change  in  the  distribu- 
tion of  wealth  as  is  often  caused  by  watering  the  stock 
of  a  company.  It  will  simply  extend  to  all,  those  who 
hold  stocks  at  present  included,  those  advantages  which 
a  minority  alone  enjoys  to-day,  and  it  will  benefit  all, 
but  stockholders  especially,  by  doing  away  with  those 
risks  which  capitalist  exploitation  forces  everyone  to  run. 


Finally,  socialism  will  rob  no  one.  I  would  ask  those 
who  assert  the  contrary,  what  description  then  should  be 
given  to  those  transactions  in  the  goods  and  property 
of  the  nobility,  the  clergy  and  above  all  of  the  com- 
munes, performed  by  our  great  radicals  in  the  French 
Revolution,  by  those  whose  work  has  become  a  "com- 
pass" for  our  guidance.  Just  as  soon  as  we  cease  simply 
substituting  one  privileged  class  for  another,  just  as 

1  "The  world  owes  every  man  a  living,"  is  a  common  saying, 


—     39     — 

soon  as  we  enable  all  without  exception  to  enjoy  the 
same  advantages,  no  one  will  be  robbed  or  deprived  of 
anything.  Simply,  inequality  in  the  enjoyment  of  privi- 
lege will  have  been  abolished,  another  privileged  class 
will  have  vanished  from  the  stage.  Yes,  the  capitalists 
will  lose,  along  with  their  special  privileges  or  rights  over 
the  means  of  production,  that  characteristic  or  quality 
that  makes  them  capitalists;  but,  I  repeat,  they  will 
have  exactly  the  same  rights  as  all  others  to  the  use 
and  enjoyment  of  those  means  of  production,  from  that 
time  forth  the  inalienable  property  of  society.  With 
capital  dethroned,  the  principles  of  the  Republic  will 
at  last  be  applied  with  controlling  power  to  the  field 
of  economics,  just  as  they  are  to  the  field  of  politics, 
and  political  democracy  will  have  ceased  to  be  a  farce, 
for  it  will  have  developed  into  its  perfect  flower,  INDUS- 
TRIAL DEMOCRACY. 


VII. 

Far  from  being  a  material  upheaval,  the  advent  of 
socialism  will  be  simply  the  culmination  of  the  economic 
evolution  now  going  on.  Born,  in  its  contemporaneous 
form,  from  the  study  of  facts,  socialism  sees  in  the  facts 
the  controlling  elements  of  the  modifications  to  be 
effected.  It  makes  no  pretence  of  going  in  advance  of 
the  economic  phenomena,  it  limits  itself  to  following 
them,  to  adapting  itself  to  conditions  which  it  does  not 
create  and  which  it  is  not  its  part  to  create.  Now,  if, 
in  all  those  cases  where  the  means  of  production  are 
already  collectively  owned  by  companies  or  trusts  or 
are  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  single  individuals,  they 
can  be  placed  at  the  disposition  of  ALL  only  by  the  sub- 
stitution of  society  as  a  whole  for  their  present  capitalist 
possessors,  in  those  cases  in  which  the  form  of  owner- 
ship of  the  means  of  labor  is  still  truly  individual,  i.  e., 
where  they  are  still  in  the  hands  of  those  who  them- 
selves directly  make  use  of  them  in  actual  work,  it  is 
not  for  society  to'  force  itself  into  the  place  of  the  present 
proprietors.  The  purpose  of  the  interference  of  society, 
indeed,  is  to  give,  in  the  only  form  to-day  possible,  the 
means  of  production  to  the  laborers  who  have  them 
not,  it  is  to  restore  the  tools  and  materials  of  labor  to 
those  who  have  been  robbed  of  them.  It  is  not  its 


—    41     — 

business,  then,  to  interfere  in  those  cases  where  the 
laborers  are  still  in  possession  of  their  tools  and  materials. 
And  so  the  peasant  will  retain  the  patch  of  land  he 
possesses  and  tills,  the  petty  tools  and  implements  will 
continue  to  belong  to  the  artisan-manufacturer  who  him- 
self works  with  them,  until  the  facts  shall  lead  them 
to  renounce  voluntarily  this  form  of  private  ownership, 
no  longer  to  their  advantage,  in  order  to  enjoy  the  far 
more  fruitful  benefits  of  collective  ownership  and  pro- 
duction. 

Moreover,  just  as,  in  the  capitalist  period,  the  changes 
brought  about  by  the  development  of  machinery  re-acted 
upon  even  those  branches  of  production  in  which 
machinery  had  not  as  yet  been  introduced,  by  developing, 
for  example,  in  all  branches  the  exploitation  of  women 
and  children,  in  the  same  way,  the  advantages  of  the 
socialization  of  the  means  of  production  previously  cen- 
tralized by  the  capitalists,  will  re-act  upon  the  petty 
proprietors  of  the  means  of  production  not  yet  socialized. 
The  petty  producer,  who  remains  master  of  his  own 
instrument  of  labor,  will,  through  the  simultaneity  and 
propinquity  of  the  embryonic  co-operative  common- 
wealth, get  the  help  he  needs.  Notably,  he  will  be  freed 
from  the  clutches  of  the  financial  middlemen  whose 
victim  he  is  at  present;  his  labor,  freed  from  their 
exploitation,  will  be  in  its  turn  emancipated,  just  as  truly, 
although  in  a  different  way,  as  will  be  the  labor  of  those 
who,  exploited  to-day  because  they  lack  the  means  of 
labor,  will  have  these  means,  socialized,  placed  at  their 
free  disposition.  The  result  for  all  will  thus  be  thu 
emancipation  of  labor,  in  the  one  case,  by  placing  the 


socialized  means  of  labor  at  the  free  disposition  of  all 
laborers,  in  the  other,  by  leaving  to  the  individual 
laborer  his  individual  tool.  In  both  cases,  the  tools 
will  be  owned  by  those  who  use  them. 

And,  though  it  displeases  our  opponents,  this  way 
of  proceeding  is  very  logical,  although  it  does  not  con- 
form to  their  pretended  conception  of  logic.  The  logic 
of  the  Socialists  does  not  consist  in  forcing  a  solution 
demanded  by  a  certain  set  of  facts  upon  other  facts 
which  do  not  yet  require  that  solution,  it  does  not  con- 
sist in  making  fish  live  out  of  the  water  because  that 
mode  of  life  agrees  with  men.  It  consists  in  adapting 
itself  in  all  cases  to  the  environment,  to  the  facts,  in 
always  acting  with  reference  to  the  facts,  instead  of 
requiring  the  same*kind  of  action  in  the  face  of  different 
combinations  of  facts.  To  those  who  assert  that  this 
position  is  in  conflict  with  the  "pure  dogma  of  the 
socialist  church,"  you  have  only  to  reply  that  there  is 
neither  a  socialist  church  nor  a  socialist  dogma,  but 
that  there  are  far  too  many  bourgeois  imbeciles  who 
attempt  to  palm  off  ideas  made  by  themselves  out  of 
the  whole  cloth  as  the  dogmas  of  socialism. 

During  the  sixteen  years  that  our  socialist  theory  has 
been  developing  in  France,  it  has  never  varied  upon 
the  subject  of  the  petty  producers.  Those  who  assert 
the  contrary  follow  their  own  imaginations  and  not  the 
facts.  I  defy  them  to  prove  that  we  have  not  always 
spoken  in  the  same  way  in  regard,  for  example,  to  the 
small  farms  of  the  peasants.They  now  accuse  our  opinion 
on  this  subject  of  opportunism,  using  the  word  in  its 
political  meaning;  they  could,  more  correctly,  accuse  us 


of  having  always  professed  opportunism,  but  this  time 
using  the  word  in  the  sense  implied  by  its  derivation. 
You  know  how  necessary  it  is  to  avoid  the  confusion — 
opportune  for  some,  it  is  true — of  the  political  meaning 
of  a  word  with  its  true  meaning.  The  political  radicals 
are  far  from  being  radical  in  the  ordinary  sense,  and 
their  brothers  (nominally  opponents)  the  opportunists, 
instead  of  wishing  that  which  is  opportune,  find  nothing 
opportune  except  the  satisfaction  of  their  own  appetites 
and  the  postponement  of  all  else.  In  the  true  meaning 
— the  time  has  come  to  say  it — of  the  word,  there  cannot 
be  a  party  more  thoroughly  opportunist  than  the  socialist 
party  which — I  will  not  cease  repeating — must  simply 
adapt  itself  to  the  facts  and  which  has  no  guide,  save 
the  facts,  to  point  the  way  in  the  transformation  of 
property. 

AMien  we  talk  of  the  transformation  of  property  which 
is  nothing,  as  they  are  obliged  to  confess,  but  "a  social 
institution/*'1  our  opponents,  with  their  strange  fashion, 
of  doing  us  justice,  change  our  words  into  "suppression 
of  property."  "Socialists  of  all  schools  have  decreed 
the  suppression  of  property"2  is  the  notable  affirmation 
of  "a  certain  number  of  young  men,  strangers  hitherto 
to  politics"3 — this  part  of  the  phrase  is  not  mine,  it  is, 
possibly,  the  least  open  to  criticism  of  any  part  of  the 
work  of  the  young  men  in  question,  who  have  felt  im- 
pelled to  speak  on  a  question  that  they  confess  is  foreign 

*M.  Celestin  Jonnart. 

2  Declaration  du  "Comite  d'action  de  la  gauche  l:'be"rale." 

8  Idem. 


_     44     — 

to  them.  Their  confession  is  superfluous;  we  would  have 
readily  perceived,  unaided,  that  they  spoke  of  socialism 
after  the  fashion  of  those  who  know  nothing  of  it. 

These  young  men,  in  founding  the  "comite  d'action 
de  la  gauche  liber  ale  "^  wrote:  uWe  are  partisans  of 
individual  liberty  and  of  individual  property."  I  assume, 
until  proof  to  the  contrary  is  forthcoming,  that  they 
are  not  partisans  of  these  things  for  themselves  and  their 
friends  alone.  If  they  advocate  them  for  every  one,  I 
beg  them  to  tell  us  what  they  think  of  the  liberty  of 
the  man  who  has,  as  his  source  of  livelihood,  only  his 
labor-power  without  the  means  of  utilizing  it. 

Either  they  recognize  that  every  man  ought  to  have 
the  means  of  labor  at  his  disposal,  and,  in  that  case, 
I  will  ask  them  how,  with  the  system  of  mechanical 
industry,  they  hope  to  put  at  the  disposal  of  all  these 
means  so  necessary  to  the  liberty  of  all. 

Or,  they  do  not  recognize  that  every  man,  to  be  free, 
must  dispose  of  the  tools  and  materials  of  labor,  and 
then  I  will  ask  them  what  becomes  of  the  liberty  of  the 
man  to  whom  the  employer  can  say:  if  you  do  such  or 
such  a  thing,  if  you  do  not  accept  such  or  such  a  thing, 
you  shall  have  no  work,  that  is  to  say,  it  shall  be  impos- 
sible for  you  to  eat.  And  that  they  may  not  accuse  me 
of  describing  hypothetical  cases  blacker  than  nature,  I 
will  submit  for  their  meditation  the  following  fact  related 
by  the  Temps  (Times)2  at  the  time  of  the  strike  of 
Kive-de-Gier. 

1  Committee  of  action  of  the  Liberal  Left. 

2  March  8,  1893,  2d  page. 


—    45     — 

"An  engine-stoker  fell  ill.  He  was  replaced,  all  the 
time  of  his  illness,  by  a  common  laborer  at  50  cents  a 
day.  The  regular  stoker  having  gotten  well,  resumed 
his  duties.  He  was  completely  surprised,  at  the  end 
of  the  fortnight,  to  receive  only  50  cents  a  day,  when 
he  had  been  paid,  before  his  illness,  80  cents.  He  pro- 
tested. 'There  it  is.  Take  it  or  leave  it/  he  was  told; 
Ve  have  found  out  that  a  common  laborer  at  50  cents 
does  this  work  just  as  well  as  you;  we  cut  you  dowm  to 
50  cents.  Get  out  or  accept  it.'  The  man  had  a  family, 
and  choice  was  forbidden  him.  He  accepted  it." 

In  the  face  of  such  facts,  M.  Celestin  Jonnart  has  the 
assurance — which  I  will  describe,  returning  one  of  the 
epithets  he  applies  to  us,  as  "villainous" — to  assert  that 
the  socialists  "are  working  for  conditions  which  will  pro- 
duce generations  of  men  who  will  know  nothing  but 
abject  submission  and  will  be  ready  for  every  degrada- 
tion." These  generations,  sir,  are  not  to  be  made;  they 
are  to  be  raised  from  their  degradation,  and  that  is  the 
task  at  which  socialism  is  working. 

If  I  have  cited  only  one  fact,  this  is  not  because  facts 
of  this  kind  are  rare,  it  is  because  the  one  I  have  cited 
has  the  advantage  of  coming  from  the  Temps  which  may 
be  suspected  of  anything  you  like  except  socialism. 
Then,  besides  proving  how  free  the  laborer  is  in  his 
choice,  this  fact  shows  how  the  free  contract  between 
capitalist  and  laborer  is  concluded.  When  the  stoker 
resumes  his  place,  he  naturally  imagines  that  he  is 
resuming  it  upon  the  former  conditions,  and  no  one 
undeceives  him.  On  pay-day,  which  does  not  come  till 
a  fortnight  later,  he  perceives  that  he  must  conclude 


—    46    — 

a  new  free  contract  different  from  the  one  he  had  a 
right  to  believe  in  force,  and  accept  50  cents  instead  of 
the  80  cents  expected  and  agreed  upon. 

Are  these  men  free,  the  stoker  and  his  like?  I  would 
gladly  have  on  this  point  the  opinion  of  M.  Leon  Say 
who  not  long  since  posed  as  the  champion,  against  the 
socialists,  of  "human  liberty  and  dignity."  The  truth 
is  that  the  laborer  is  free,  only  when,  to  the  right  of 
being  free,  he  joins  the  effective  power  of.  being  free, 
only  when  he  has  at  his  disposition  the  things  necessary 
to  the  realization  of  his  labor,  only,  in  other  words,  when 
he  does  not  have  to  throw  himself  upon  the  mercy  of 
the  possessors  of  those  things.  Whatever  the  law  may 
say,  the  man  who  depends  upon  another  for  his  sub- 
sistence is  not  free.  What  is  requisite  is  to  furnish  means 
of  labor  to  the  laborers  who  have  them  not;  now,  on  the 
basis  of  the  present  form  or  character  of  these  means, 
society  can  assure  possession  of  them  to  all,  only  when 
these  means  shall  have  been  socialized,  shall  have  become 
social  property.  As  regards  the  laborers  who  still  possess 
their  means  of  labor,  they  will  retain  them,  as  I  explained 
just  above.  In  fact,  only  through  socialism  can  indi- 
vidual liberty  be  made  a  reality  for  all. 

It  is  the  same  with  individual  property  as  with  indi- 
vidual liberty.  From  all  that  I  have  just  stated  it  is 
clear  that  the  only  property  that  socialism  wishes  to 
transform,  is  the  property  no  longer  made  use  of  by 
the  individual  owners  thereof;  it  is  the  property  which 
is  formed  by  the  agglomeration  of  petty  scraps  of  prop- 
erty wrested  from  the  immense  majority,  and  which  exists 


—    47    — 

only  to  the  detriment  of  that  very  majority.1  And  even 
in  this  case  there  will  be  no  suppression,  since  the  present 
holders  will  be  granted  the  use  of  their  transformed  prop- 
erty on  the  same  terms  as  others, 

What,  then,  is  the  property  of  "those  silent  multitudes 
who  toil  and  struggle  so  hard  for  existence  and  who 
are  in  truth  the  artisans  of  our  greatness?"2  Is  not 
vour  capitalist  society  stripping  them  more  and  more 
every  day  of  the  means  of  labor  and  of  individually 
owned  dwellings,  and  leaving  to  them  in  individual 
ownership  only  the  things  indispensable  to  the  bare 
support  of  life?  It  is  the  capitalist  regime  which,  by 
increasing  immeasurably  the  property  of  the  few,  con- 
tracts the  limits  within  which  the  personal  acquirement 
of  property  by  the  many  is  possible.  It  is  the  socialist 
regime  which  will  increase  this  possibility  of  the  personal 
acquirement  of  property,  by  assuring  to  each  the  share 
earned  by  his  labor.  It  is  only  under  the  regime  of 
socialism  that  individual  property  will  be  a  reality  for 
all,  as  this  regime  alone  will  suppress — though  sup- 
pressing nothing  else — the  possibility  of  using  this  prop- 
erty to  exploit  the  labor  of  others. 

1  Political  economy  confuses  on  principle  two  very  differ- 
ent kinds  of  private  property,  of  which  one  rests  on  the 
producers'  own  labor,  the  other  on  the  employment  of  the 
labor  of  others.  It  forgets  that  the  latter  not  only  is  the 
direct  antithesis  of  the  former,  but  absolutely  grows  on  its 
tomb  only."— Marx,  1st  vol.  of  Capital,  Humboldt  Edition, 
page  488. 

*M.  Celestin  Jonnart. 


—    48    — 


VIII. 

It  appears  that  from  the  moment  when  it  will  no  longer 
be  possible  to  exploit  the  individual,  there  will  no  longer 
be  any  individuality.  At  least  it  so  appears  to  the  capital- 
ists who  deem  that  which  does  not  yield  them  a  profit 
to  be  non-existent.  To  the  socialists,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  existence  of  individuality  appears  dependent  upon 
its  freedom.  Now,  as  it  is,  as  we  have  just  seen,  only 
in  the  socialist  period  that  all  individuals  will  be  able 
to  have  the  means  necessary  to  true  freedom,  it  follows 
that  the  triumph  of  socialism  will  be  the  triumph  of 
the  individual,  the  blossoming  of  personality.1  In  the 
socialist  period,  indeed,  all  those  who  shall  wish  to 
work  will  be  able  to  do  so,  by  choosing  freely  their 
favorite  kind  of  socially  useful  labor,  and  all  will  be 
able  to  consume  the  social  products  proportionally  to 
the  labor  they  have  furnished.  Will  it  not,  therefore, 
be  to  the  interest  of  all  to  work,  and  to  try  to  make 
the  work  as  little  toilsome  and  as  productive  as  possible? 

1  "In  place  of  the  old  bourgeois  society  with  its  classes 
and  class  antagonisms  we  shall  have  an  association  in  which 
the  free  development  of  each  is  the  condition  for  the  free 
development  of  all." — Marx  and  Engels,  Communist  Mani- 
festo, page  43,  New  York,  1898,  published  by  Nat.  Ex.  Com- 
mittee of  the  Socialist  Labor  Party. 


—    49    — 

Is  there  not  here,  apart  from  the  joy  of  serving  one's 
fellows,  the  most  powerful  motive  for  emulation  both 
as  regards  the  quantity  of  labor  individually  performed 
and  in  the  invention  or  discovery  of  improved  processes 
tending  to  procure  for  each  and  all  the  maximum  of 
benefits  in  return  for  the  minimum  of  exertion? 

A  certain  degree  of  audacity  is  required  to  dare  com- 
pare the  producers  of  the  future  under  socialism,  with 
the  office-holders  of  to-day  under  capitalism.  What 
interest  has  the  office-holder  of  to-day  to  reduce  to  the 
minimum  the  cost  to  the  State  of  the  services  it  is  his 
function  to  perform?  His  salary,  determined  before  any 
labor  is  performed,  is  independent  of  the  quantity  and 
quality  of  his  labor;  and  so  the  office-holder,  though 
full  of  righteous  indignation  against  the  workingmen 
who  wish  to  work  only  eight  hours  a  day,  seeks,  on  his 
own  part,  to  work  just  as  little  as  possible,  and  he 
squanders  and  wastes  as  much  as  possible,  because  extrava- 
gance never  costs  him  a  penny  and  sometimes  brings  him 
in  handsome  rewards.  While  under  the  regime  of  social- 
ism, the  personal  interest  of  the  individual  will  be  in 
harmony  with  the  social  interest  of  all,  under  the  present 
system  the  personal  interests  of  the  office-holders  are  in 
direct  conflict  with  the  interest  of  the  State.  Under  the 
regime  of  socialism,  men,  all  men,  will  be  producers  and 
not  office-holders;  they  will  not  be  office-holders  any 
more  than  are  members  of  a  family  wrho,  in  order  to 
provide  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  needs  of  the  family, 
perform  severally  various  functions. 


50 


In  conclusion,  the  whole  question  may  be  summed  up 
thus:  Is  the  spirit  of  initiative  and  personal  energy 
likely  to  be  more  broadly  disseminated  among  the  masses, 
when  the  latter  know  that  they  are  compelled  to  make 
their  own  wretchedness  the  instrument  of  the  prosperity 
of  a  minority,  or  when  they  shall  know  that  their  own 
prosperity  will  be  whatever  they,  by  their  own  labor,  shall 
make  it,  under  a  system  of  absolute  equality  of  privilege  ? 
There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  answer  in  the  minds 
of  all  those  who  are  not  too  much  wonted  to  the  denial 
of  truth.  But,  under  the  regime  of  socialism,  initiative1 
and  energy  cannot  promote  personal  interests  alone; 
while  being  more  favorable  than  ever  to  those  interests, 
they  will  necessarily  be  advantageous  to  all.  As  soon 
as  the  material  conditions  necessary  for  the  attainment 
of  individual  prosperity  shall  also  be  the  conditions 
requisite  for  social  prosperity,  we  shall  see  grow  out  of 
this  harmony  a  system  of  ethics  based  on  the  newly 
acquired  consciousness  of  social  solidarity,  and  under 
this  new  morality  the  action  of  the  individual  will  have 
not  only  as  its  necessary  though  indirect  result,  but 
also  as  its  guiding  principle,  motive  and  goal,  the  social 
or  common  interest,  the  greatest  good  of  all. 

It  would  seem  that  from  this  time  forth  all  ought  to 
unite  their  efforts  in  order  to  hasten  the  dawn  of  the 
realization  of  a  social  environment  so  advantageous  to 

1  This  word  is  used  so  exclusively  in  a  technical  sense 
by  the  Direct  Legislation  faddists,  it  may  be  necessary  to 
say  it  is  here  used  to  denote  originality  and  independent 
strength  of  mind,  etc.;— Tr. 


—     51     — 

all.  In  fact,  excepting  a  very  small  minority  of  great 
financiers  and  capitalists,  all  .those  who  work  or  have 
worked  with  hand  or  brain,  all  have  an  interest  in  the 
triumph  of  socialism;  unfortunately  all  are  not  conscious 
of  the  undeniable  precariousness  of  the  situation  of  ail 
under  the  regime  of  capitalism,  and  so  do  not  see  the 
advantage  for  all  in  transforming  this  regime  along  the 
lines  of  its  social  tendencies,  and  many  will  stupidly 
strive  to  prolong  the  state  of  things  which  is  the  cause 
of  their  troubles. 

Socialism  repels  no  one  and  is  open  to  all  those,  with- 
out regard  to  their  social  position,  who  comprehend  its 
necessity.  But,  if  it  is  far  from  repelling  them — striving 
indeed  to  attract  them — it  canot  count  in  advance,  gen- 
erally speaking,  on  those  who  too  readily  become  the 
dupes  of  illusions  begotten  by  a  more  or  less  privileged 
social  situation  and  who  are  unable  to  rise  above  their 
class  prejudices  sufficiently  to  form  a  just  conception 
of  their  own  true  interests.  While  preparing  the  ground 
for  socialism  which  is  developing  wherever  the  capitalist 
mode  of  production  has  reached  a  certain  stage,  the 
economic  phenomena  at  the  same  time  necessitate  the 
economic  and  political  organization  of  the  industrial1 
laborers,  and  they  are  the  class  immediately  and  directly 
interested  in  the  triumph  of  socialism. 

Small  industrial  employers,  artisans,  retail  merchants 
and  working  owners  of  small  farms  have  two-fold  class- 
ties.  They  belong  to  the  possessing  class,  and  yet  they 

1  "Industrial,"    as    used    here,    and,    indeed,    correctly,    it 
should  be  noted,  does  not  include  agricultural. — Tr. 


—     52     — 

are  exploited.  When,  under  the  empire  of  a  naive  pride 
and  vain  hopes,  the  man  proud  of  his  possessions,  the 
would-be  capitalist,  dominates  in  them,*  they  give  heed 
to  the  dirty  blackguards  who  are  forever  telling  them 
that  the  common  laborer  and  the  socialist  wish  to  take 
their  little  property  away  from  them,  and  they  show  a 
hostility  which,  in  spite  of  their  conservative  intentions, 
is  aimed  against  those  whom  they  ought  to  help  if  they 
wish  to  be  sure  of  retaining  the  little  property  they 
have.  When,  under  the  lashes  of  the  thong  of  stern 
reality  they  feel  themselves  exploited  and  menaced  with 
expropriation,  they  applaud  the  demands  of  the  socialists 
and  help  support — as  has  often  been  seen — the  strikes 
of  the  laborers.  According  to  circumstances  the  middle 
class  declares  itself  in  this  way,  now  on  one  side,  now 
on  the  other. 

The  industrial  workingmen  who  own  nothing  but  their 
labor-power  and  to  whom  the  possession,  even  in  a  dream, 
of  the  smallest  estate  is  an  impossibility,  cannot  pos- 
sibly conceive  the  false  idea  that  they  have  anything 
to  lose  by  the  victory  of  socialism.  From  that  to  thinking 
that  they  have  everything  to  gain  by  that  victory  is  not 
far;  for  this  all  that  is  needed  is  for  them  to  be  brought 
into  contact  with  the  socialist  propaganda.  Therefore 
the  principal  mission  of  socialism  is  to  instruct  and 
organize  the  multitudes  of  industrial  laborers;  they  must 
be  won  over  the  first  of  all.  This  which  is,  in  fact, 
for  the  middle  class  only  a  defensive  war  against  the 
great  capitalists  becomes  an  offensive  war  for  the  great 
majority  of  the  industrial  laborers  who  have  to  conquer 
that  which  the  middle  class  has  only  to  preserve. 


—     53     — 

Because  we  say  that  socialism  makes  its  appeal  more 
particularly  to  the  industrial  laborers,  we  beg  our  critics 
not  to  represent  us  as  saying  that  socialism  ought  to 
neglect  the  members  of  all  other  classes.  Socialism  strug- 
gling for  the  emancipation — no  longer  impossible — of 
all,  combats  in  every  rank  or  stratum  of  *  society  all 
exploitations  and  all  oppressions,  and  it  is  the  natural 
defender  of  all  the  exploited  and  all  the  oppressed. 
Just  as,  to  regard  the  economic  question  as  the  sum  and 
substance  of  militant  socialism  is  not,  in  our  opinion, 
to  restrict  its  field  of  action,  but  is  simply,  on  the 
contrary,  to  pursue  directly  the  only  line  of  conduct 
by  which  it  is  possible  for  its  efforts  to  produce  broad 
general  effects,  so  to  devote  our  attention  first  of  all  to 
the  industrial  laborers  is  not  to  make  light  of  the  wrongs 
of  the  other  victims  of  exploitation,  but  it  is  to  devote 
our  first  efforts  to  strengthening  the  active  army  of 
socialism,  formed  of  those  who  have  to  blaze  out  a  path 
for  the  movement,  but  whose  success — which  will  be 
hastened  by  the  support  of  members  of  other  classes — 
will  assure  the  emancipation  of  all. 


IX. 


Socialism  and  the  party  which  incarnates  it  are 
begotten  by  the  economic  transformations  which  are 
taking  place  under  our  eyes.  If  it  is  impossible  to  sup- 
press (or  eliminate)  certain  phases  of  social  development, 
at  a  certain  stage  of  development  it  is  possible  for  men 
to  facilitate  or  retard  the  success  of  socialism.  This 
depends  sometimes  upon  men  who  are  not  socialists,  and 
nearly  always  upon  socialist  tactics. 

Is  socialism  inexorably  destined  to  wait  for  "the  natural 
play  (working)  of  institutions  and  laws  to  bring  to  pass 
the  triumph  of  its  aspirations/7  as  M.  Charles  Dupuy 
asked  in  one  of  his  astonishing  addresses?  Socialism 
which  is  essentially  an  evolutionary  theory  expects  its 
realization  to  result  from  the  natural  working  out  of  the 
facts;  but,  under  normal  conditions,  it  can  no  more  rely 
on  the  natural  play  or  action  of  existing  laws,  than  a 
republican,  eager  for  the  Republic,  could  with  any  show 
of  reason,  have  relied,  in  the  time  of  the  Empire,  on 
the  natural  working  of  the  imperial  laws  to  evolve  the 
Republic.  But  in  a  republic,  such  as  France  or  the 
United  States,  where  universal  suffrage  makes  the  People 
the  sole  nominal  sovereign,  and  where  by  strictly  legal 
action  the  People  may  become  the  effective,  actual  sov- 
ereign, if  socialism  cannot  rely  for  its  triumph  upon  the 


—     55     — 

free  play  and  natural  working  of  the  laws  of  evolution, 
it  can  rely  upon  the  ever-growing  influence  of  socialist 
electors  and  officials  on  political  action  and  legislation — 
a  source  of  hope  that  was  forbidden  to  the  republicans 
under  the  empire.  It  may  also  happen  that  its  triumph 
may  be  brought  about  by  a  rupture  of  de  facto  legality, 
a  rupture  which  under  certain  contingencies  may  become 
unavoidable,  a  rupture  which  may  be  forced  upon  them 
without  any  regard  to  the  personal  preferences  of  social- 
ists, as,  for  example,  in  France,  on  the  4th  of  September, 
1870,  such  a  rupture  was  forced  upon  Jules  Simon  and 
other  fanatical  partisans  of  legality,  and  it  is  a  rupture 
of  this  kind  which  constitutes  a  revolution. 

Evolution  and  Eevolution  are  not  contradictory  terms. 
Quite  the  contrary.  When  they  both  take  place,  the  one 
following  and  supplementing  the  other,  the  second  is 
the  conclusion  of  the  first,  the  revolution  is  only  the  char- 
acteristic crisis  which  ends  and  gives  real  effect  to  a 
period  of  evolution.  Notice  what  takes  place  in  the 
case  of  the  young  chick.  After  having  gone  through  the 
regular  process  of  development  inside  of  its  shell,  the 
little  brute,  who  is  as  yet  unable  to  read  the  Temps, 
does  not  know  that  it  has  been  decreed  that  evolution 
must  take  place  without  any  violence;  instead  of  em- 
ploying its  leisure  in  gently  and  legally  wearing  a  hole 
through  its  shell,  it  breaks  its  way  out  without  warning 
or  ceremony.  Well,  then,  socialism  which  does  read  the 
Temps,  will  act  just  as  though  it  had  not  read  it,  and, 
if  the  emergency  arises,  will  imitate  the  little  chick;  if 
in  the  course  of  events  it  becomes  necessary,  it  will  burst 
asunder  the  mould  of  legality  within  which  it  is  develop- 


—    66    — 

ing,  and  within  which,  at  the  present  time,  it  has  simply 
to  continue  its  regular  and  peaceful  development. 

The  distinctive  mark  of  a  revolution,  as  I  have  said, 
is  the  rupture  of  de  facto  legality — that  is  the  only  sine 
qua  non,  everything  else  is  merely  incidental.  Unfor- 
tunately the  strong  general  tendency  is  to  think  that  the 
word,  revolution,  necessarily  implies  the  execution  of 
persons  and  the  destruction  of  property.  The  latter  are 
catastrophes  that  the  socialists  will  make  every  possible 
effort  to  avoid;  for  they  know  that  excesses  in  one  direc- 
tion inevitably  provoke  a  re-actionary  movement  in  the 
opposite  direction,  and  they  will  do  everything  they  pos- 
sibly can  to  keep  from  thus  unconsciously  defeating  their 
own  ends. 

At  some  particular  time  in  the  future  events  may 
occur  that,  purely  by  the  power  of  circumstances  over 
men,  will  lead  to  a  rupture  of  legality.  When  and  how 
will  this  happen,  if  it  does  happen?  We  know  nothing 
about  it,  and  we  are  not  and  will  not  be  the  responsible 
cause  of  such  an  event,  because  we  recognize  and  point 
out  the  possibility  of  its  occurrence.  The  interested  fears 
of  some  will  not  destroy  this  possibility,  nor  will  the 
too  pardonable  impatience  of  others  convert  it  into  a 
probability.  As  the  Temps  said  one  day,  in  speaking 
incidentally  of  revolutions:  "One  does  not  make  them; 
they  make  themselves."1 

Although  we  can  not  indicate  the  character  any  more 
than  the  period  of  this  possible  rupture  of  legality,  still 
we  have  a  right  to  say  that  this  rupture,  or  in  other 

1  Issue   of  Nov.   14,   1891. 


—     57    — 

words,  this  revolution,,  may  take  place  peacefully,  like 
the  one  that  occurred  on  the  4th  of  September,  1870. 
The  difference  in  the  consequences  of  the  two  revolutions 
makes  no  difference  from  our  present  point  of  view.  It 
is  true  that  the  revolution  of  the  4th  of  September  was 
purely  a  political  revolution.  But,  while  the  revolution, 
whose  possibility  we  are  considering,  is  to  usher  in  a 
social  transformation,  as  a  revolution  it  is  simply  a 
change  of  a  political  character.  If  the  capitalists  are  as 
prudent  as  were  the  Bonapartists  on  the  4th  of  Sep- 
tember, the  future  rupture  of  legality  may  be  just  as 
peaceful  as  was  that  in  which  Senator  Jules  Simon  took 
part.  It  is  seen,  then,  that  socialism  may  burst  the 
mould  of  legality  while  preserving  the  peace.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  may  make  use  of  violence  while  remaining 
within  the  forms  of  strict  legality. 

Whether  or  not  a  revolutionary  situation  is  destined 
to  arise,  the  duty,  the  whole  duty  of  socialists  consists 
in  educating  the  masses,  in  rendering  them  conscious 
of  their  condition,  their  task  and  their  responsibility, 
of  organizing  them  in  readiness  for  the  day  when  the 
political  power  shall  fall  into  their  hands.  To  win  for 
socialism  the  greatest  possible  number  of  partisans,  that 
is  the  task  to  which  socialist  parties  must  consecrate 
their  efforts,  using,  for  this  purpose,  all  pacific  and  legal 
means,  but  using  such  means  only.  In  ordinary  times, 
such  as  those  in  which  we  live,  any  sort  of  action, 
except  peaceful  and  legal  action  with  a  view  to  the 
instruction  and  organization  of  the  masses,  is  sure, 
whether  so  intended  or  not,  tofhave  a  deterrent  and  reac- 


—     58     — 

tionary  influence,  and  to  interfere  with,  the  spread  of 
socialist  ideas. 

What  I  am  advocating  is  not  the  policy  of  keeping 
our  colors  hidden  in  our  pockets,,  it  is  not  the  policy  of 
mutilating,  however  slightly,  the  theory  of  socialism,  it 
is  the  policy  of  sticking  strictly  to  that  theory  without 
marring  or  disfiguring  it  by  violences  which  form  no 
part  of  it,  by  vain  predictions  which  threaten  with  no 
certainty  of  fulfilment.  The  truth  is  that  it  is  impossible 
to  promise  in  advance  to  stick  solely  to  either  method 
— force  or  legality;  and  this  is  true  for  all  parties.  A 
Eadical,  M.  Sigismund  Lacroix,  recognized  this  fact 
when  he  wrote  some  time  ago:  "Many  people  of  whom 
I  am  one  .  .  .  would  hesitate  to  swear  to  stick,  under 
all  circumstances,  to  legal  and  peaceful  means.  This 
depends,  not  on  opinions,  but  on  situations.  Revolu- 
tionary situations  may  arise,  when  to  be  a  revolutionist 
will  be  a  duty."1 

Even  admitting  that  there  must  be  a  revolution — a 
question  which  the  events  and  not  the  wills  of  men 
will  decide — this  revolution,  no  matter  what  its  incidents, 
will  be  only  one  term  in  the  series  of  phenomena  which 
are  leading  us  from  one  social  form  to  another,  only  one 
link  in  a  chain,  and  is  it  reasonable,  therefore,  to  hyp- 
notize the  laborers  by  concentrating  their  attention  on 
that  single  link?  What  is  necessary  is  to  make  socialists, 
to  make  the  masses  conscious  of  the  economic  movement 
in  progress,  to  bring  their  wills  into  harmony  with  that 
movement,  and  thus  to  lead  to  the  election  of  more  and 

lLe  Radical,  May  30,  1893. 


—     59     — 

more  socialists  to  our  various  elective  assemblies,  where 
it  will  be  their  duty  and  privilege  to  maintain  the  for- 
gotten and  despised  rights  of  the  people,  and  to  effect, 
so  far  as  they  can,  under  the  circumstances,  the  various 
ameliorations  of  the  conditions  and  status  of  the  toiling 
masses  for  which  socialism  is  striving.  The  socialist 
party  is  the  only  party  which  pursues  these  aims  in  a 
practical  fashion,  by  basing  its  tactics  on  the  economic 
conditions  of  the  environment.  What  is  the  use,  there- 
fore, of  talking  of  anything  but  socialism,  of  expatiating 
on  the  nature  of  the  crisis  which  will  terminate  the  pres- 
ent phase  of  evolution  and  will  be  the  beginning  of  a 
new  phase?  "Why  waste  time  talking  about  a  contingent 
event  that  circumstances  may  force  upon  us  in  the  future, 
but  the  time  or  character  of  which  no  man  can  define  or 
describe  to-day?  At  all  events,  if  we  must  talk  of  revolu- 
tion, our  aim  should  be  to  overthrow  the  false  ideas  on 
this  subject  industriously  circulated  by  our  opponents 
with  a  view  to  deterring  recruits  from  enlisting  in  the 
socialist  army. 


X.1 

Just  as  the  idea  of  revolution  is  identified  with  the 
ideas  of  murder  and  destruction,  in  the  same  way  the 
internationalism  of  the  workers  is  identified  with  anti- 

1  In  France,  where  pseudo-patriotism,  or  jingoism,  runs 
riot,  the  argument  that  international  socialism  is  unpatriotic 
is  much  in  vogue  with  the  hireling  scribes  of  capitalism. 
Hence,  this  section.  In  this  country,  owing  in  part  to  its 


patriotism.  There  is  in  the  latter  case  as  in  the  former 
a  fundamental  error,  and  it  remains  for  me  to  show 
that,  theoretically  and  practically,  the  identification  of 
the  internationalism  of  labor  with  anti-patriotism  is 
unjustifiable.  And,  to  begin  with,  he  who  says  inter- 
nationalism says  internationalism,  and  does  not  say  anti- 
nationalism;  consequently,  you  see  at  once  that  no  one 
ought — either  to  approve  or  condemn  it — to  use  the 
word,  internationalism,  to  express  what  it  does  not  mean 
and  what  other  words  do  mean. 

Instead  of  allowing  ourselves  to  be  led  astray  by  our 
various  fantastic  notions,  let  us  here  as  elsewhere  examine 
the  facts  and  see  what  conclusions  they  impose  upon  us. 
Socialism  flows  from  the  facts,  it  follows  them  and  does 
not  precede  them.  This  is  the  truth  to  which  we  must 
constantly  return,  which  we  must  never  forget.  Now, 
the  facts  show  us,  bon  gre  mal  gre,  two  things:  on  the 
one  hand,  the  existence  of  countries  (fatherlands);  on 
the  other,  the  existence,  in  every  social  stratum,  of  an 
international  solidarity. 

It  is  with  countries  as  with  classes;  some  deny  the 
existence  of  the  former,  others  of  the  latter.  Now,  in 
reason  it  is  no  more  possible  to  deny  the  existence  of 
the  country  (fatherland)  than  the  existence  of  classes 
in  that  country.  It  is  all  right  to  look  forward  to  the 
day  when  national  patriotism  shall  be  swallowed  up  in 

geographical  isolation,  but  still  more  to  the  almost  com- 
plete lack  of  a  sense  of  international  solidarity  on  the  part 
of  the  American  worker,  we  seldom  have  to  meet  this  argu- 
ment, and  so  I  will  condense  and  abridge  this  section.— Tr. 


—     61     — 

world-wide  brotherhood,  when  classes  shall  vanish  in 
human  solidarity,  but  while  waiting  for  the  facts  to  turn 
this  noble  ideal  into  a  reality,  we  must,  in  both  cases, 
adapt  ourselves  to  the  facts  as  they  actually  are  at  present. 
To  wish  to  suppress  them  (classes,  etc.)  does  not  suppress 
them,  to  protest  against  their  existence  does  not  at  all 
prevent  them  from  existing  and,  so  long  as  countries 
and  classes  shall  exist,  it  will  be  necesary  for  us,  not 
to  deny  their  existence  in  declamations  in  the  Bryan- 
McKinley  style,  but  to  adapt  our  tactics  to  the  facts 
which  are  the  consequences  of  their  existence. 

Just  as  the  feeling  of  national  solidarity  is  added  to 
the  feeling  of  family  solidarity,  without  destroying  the 
latter,  in  the  same  way  the  relatively  new  sentiment  of 
international  solidarity  is  added  to  the  former  which 
is  still  retained.  A  new  sentiment  springing  from  a 
new  situation  does  not  annihilate  the  older  sentiments 
and  emotions  as  long  as  the  conditions  that  gave  them 
birth  continue  to  exist,  and  families  and  nations  are  still 
in  existence. 

The  tendency  toward  internationalism  was  inaugu- 
rated by  capital.  In  obedience  to  its  own  law  of  con- 
tinuous growth,  it  has,  more  and  more,  substituted  inter- 
national commerce  for  national  trade.  It  has  created 
industries  whose  raw  materials  come  from  abroad  and 
whose  products  require,  for  an  outlet,  the  universal  or 
world  market.  It  has  thus  developed  the  reciprocal  inter- 
dependence of  nations,  no  one  of  which  to-day  can  live 
without  the  aid  of  the  others. 

Capitalist  internationalism,  moreover,  pursues  its  ends 
with  stern  remorselessness.  In  order  to  lower  national 


—     62     — 

wages  and  gain  greater  profits.,  the  capitalist  does  not 
hesitate  to  deprive  his  fellow-countrymen  of  work,  and 
to  import,  to  compete  with  them  on  the  labor  market, 
foreigners  wonted  by  greater  poverty  to  a  lower  standard 
of  living,  and  therefore  able  and  willing  to  work  for 
lower  wages.  To  prohibit  them,  not  from  employing 
foreigners,  but  from  paying  them  less  than  the  national 
rate  of  wages  is  the  only  effective  means  of  meeting  this 
evil.  On  the  other  hand,  provided  he  sees  a  goodly  profit 
in  the  transaction,  the  capitalist  never  hesitates  to  loan 
money  or  sell  military  supplies  to  a  foreign  country, 
though  he  thus  increases  its  power  to  wage  war  against  his 
own. 

This  international  character,  assumed  by  capital  in  all 
its  forms,  is,  in  its  effects,  co-extensive  with  the  domain 
of  human  affairs.  And  so,  as  M.  Aulard  declared  in  a 
lecture  about  which  there  has  been  too  much  talk:  "There 
are  no  national  boundaries  for  reason  and  science  *  * 
They  are  neither  French,  nor  English,  nor  German,  but 
international  and  human."  How,  therefore,  can  the 
workingmen  be  justly  reproached  for  taking  the  road 
on  which  everything  and  everybody  has  started,  and 
along  which  the  capitalists  have  preceded  them?  Face 
to  face  with  the  international  domination  of  capital,  they 
have  come  to  understand,  in  all  civilized  nations,  the 
common  character,  the  oneness,  of  their  own  interests. 
They  are  everywhere  the  victims  of  the  same  kind  of 
exploitation,  due  everywhere  to  the  same  cause.  The 
same  facts  have  suggested  to  them  the  same  demands, 
the  same  means  and  tactics  to  attain  the  same  goal. 
International  exploitation  has  thus  given  birth  to  an 


—     63     — 

ever  growing  international  solidarity  among  the  workers 
who  resist  its  encroachments.  And  the  international 
concurrence  of  the  workers  is  publicly  declared  by  the 
world-wide  celebration  of  the  First  day  of  May. 

Notwithstanding  the  most  sincere  sentiment  of  inter- 
national solidarity  on  both  sides,  the  workingmen  of  two 
countries  may  still  have  to  fight  against  each  other.  This 
is  one  of  the  numerous  contradictions — and  one  of  the 
most  horrible — inherent  in  the  capitalist  regime,  which 
is  condemned  to  aspire  to  peace  and  to  unchain  the  horrid 
dogs  of  war.  While,  for  example,  commerce  on  the  world 
market  requires  peace,  the  bitterness  of  competition  on 
that  market  begets  conflicts.  *  *  *  * 


To  safeguard  the  little  independence  left  to  them  as 
laborers,  the  workers  have  been  led  by  the  state  of  affairs, 
by  actual  conditions,  as  were  the  business  men  before 
them,  to  be  internationalists;  but  they  are  patriots,  and 
must  be  patriots  only  whenever  their  country — be  it 
France  or  America — is  menaced  by  danger  from  abroad. 

I  hope  you  now  see  that  the  internationalism  of  the 
workers  and  the  socialists  cannot,  by  any  possibility  lead 
to  anti-patriotism.  These  are  two  distinct  ideas  which 
cannot  be  legitimately  confounded,  no  matter  what  the 
object  of  this  confusion.  Our  internationalism  and  our 
patriotism  spring  from  two  wholly  distinct  categories  of 
facts,  and  different  facts  logically  necessitate  different 
solutions,  logic  consisting,  here  and  everywhere,  in  adapt- 
ing the  solution  to  the  facts  and  not  in  applying  the 
same  solution  indiscriminately  to  all  sorts  of  facts. 


To  sum  up,  workingmen  and  socialists  ought  to  be 
internationalists  in  their  relations  with  their  toiling  com- 
rades when  the  interests  of  lahor  are  at  stake  in  times 
of  peace,  patriots  and  Frenchmen  before  all  when  France, 
our  country  shall  be,  if  it  must  be,  in  danger  of  war, 
conscious  always  of  the  duty  to  be  performed,  conscious, 
if  need  be,  especially  in  victory,  of  the  duty  of  respecting 
in  the  case  of  others,  especially  the  conquered,  the  rights 
that  they  claim  for  themselves. 


I  have  finished.  That  is  all  that  socialism  means.  I 
have  taken  pains  to  set  it  forth  in  its  entirety,  free  from 
both  the  attenuations'  and  the  exaggerations  by  which  it 
is  often  mutilated  or  disfigured,  but  which  seem  to  me 
to  have  no  foundation  in  reality.  Its.  goal  is  the  socializa- 
tion of  the  means  of  labor  which  have  already  manifested 
collective  tendencies — either  in,  their  mode  of  ownership 
or  in  the  mode  of  their  employment  as  exploiting  agencies 
— and  the  abolition  of  classes.  Its  means,  the  transfer- 
ence to  the  political  battlefield  of  the  Class  Struggle,  the 
existence  of  which  it  is  compelled  to  acknowledge.  It 
must,  for  the  time  being,  be  resolved  to  preserve  legality 
at  home  and  peace  abroad,  but  equally  energetically  de- 
termined to  tolerate  no  measure  that  will  make  the  situ- 
ation of  the  toilers  more  intolerable,  to  preserve  re- 
publican institutions  intact  and  to  defend  the  national 
territory  against  all  foreign  foes. 

GABEIEL  DEVILLEo 


PARTNERS  WANTED 


The  publishing  house  which  issues  this  book  is  no] 
owned  by  a  capitalist  nor  by  a  group  of  capitalists.  l\ 
is  owned  by  a  constantly  growing  number  of  working 
pie  (1,640  in  February,  1907)  who  have  each  put  in  t< 
dollars. 

They  get  no  dividends ;  what  they  do  get  is  the  privil< 
of  buying  books  at  half  price.    Moreover,  they  make  pos 
sible  in  this  way  the  publication  of  the  real  books  of  In- 
ternational Socialism  atj)rices  within  the  reach  of  laborei 

Whatever  profit  is  made  on  these  books  is  used 
bring  out  more  books,  but  our  prices  are  so  low  thai 
this  does  not  provide  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  the] 
money  that  is  needed. 

That  is  why  we  want  more  partners.  A  dollar  al 
month  for  ten  months  will  give  you  the  privilege  of  buy- 
ing books  at  special  rates  as  soonxas  you  have  made  your 
first  payment.  Eut  by  paying  ten  dollars  at  one  time  you 
can  get  a  certain  number  of  books  free  and  special  rates 
on  your  first  order  for  other  books. 

Write  for  particulars. 


CHARLES  H;  KERR  &  COMPANY 

(Co-operative) 
264  Kinzie  Street*  Chicago 


GAYLAMOUNT 

PAMPHLET  BINDER 

•^ 

Manufactured  by 

GAYLORD  BROS.  Inc. 

Syracuse,  N.  Y. 

Stoclton,  Calif. 


M214348 

HX2.G6 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


